Niti Aayog CEO lauds corporate tax regime, says India now a reliable place for investment

On Friday, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant called India's corporate tax regime "probably the best in the world" saying that the global perception of investors towards India has changed. He said that India is now a reliable alternative for investment stating that American investors now want to shift from China and they are looking towards a different alternative. He also stated that India should really use the strength of its domestic market to lure investors.  

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"India has put out probably the best corporate tax regime in the world now. At 15% with an effective rate of 17.1%, makes it the best country as far as corporate tax is concerned. This corporate tax coupled with the size of the domestic market, plus the fact that you pushed digitization and structural reforms that have been carried out makes India a very-very attractive destination for investment,"  said Kant. 

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The NITI Aayog CEO also stated that India has massive opportunities in sectors like electronics, pharmaceutical and sports goods. He spoke about how the country was in talks with a number of companies. "Apple has already made very substantial investments into India. They are looking at a much bigger period. India should really look at 5-6 sectors where it can be a global champion, penetrating global markets," he said.

 "Silicon Valley has a much closer relationship with Bangalore with reference to the USA. Every top American company today has engineering and R & D either in Bangalore or Hyderabad." 

'Path-breaking' structural reforms

Amitabh Kant stated the reason for India growing into such an attractive country for investment giving credit to the recent amalgamation of 54 labour laws into 4 laws. He said that this narrowing down in the structural reforms had been "path-breaking" allowing companies to do large-scale manufacturing in India with ease. He also asserted that a huge amount of work has been done to improve India's intellectual property rights (IPR) regime. "We are benchmarked against USA and Japan now. Patent rights are being given within a period of 18-24 months now," he stated.

Read: Amitabh Kant: 'Government has introduced a number of structural reforms'

NITI Aayog CEO also stated that more urbanisation will be done in the next five decades than what was done in last 500 years. "We are the only country which is doing 100 smart cities, India is the only country with 50 metros and the government is rolling out a whole programme of asset monetisation. We are putting out 10,000 kilometres of roads and new airports. We are doing major public sector privatisation. I feel that India's story will be told over the next 2-3 decades," he concluded.

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