NEW DELHI, Nov 29: The government would soon bring
the tax refund scheme for exporters before the Union Cabinet
and would notify it, Commerce and Industry minister Piyush
Goyal informed Rajya Sabha on Friday.
Replying to supplementaries during the Question Hour, the
minister said the government is also engaged in codifying
various laws relating to labour into a far more crisper, well
defined, easy to navigate and understand set of labour codes
and the same would also come up before Parliament soon for
approval.
Goyal said the government is also encouraging its
entrepreneurs to expand their manufacturing operations in the
current global trade situation where nations are engaged with
each other in a trade war.
The government has already announced the Remission of
Duties or Taxes on Export Product (RoDTEP) scheme
“The scheme RoDTEP was announced by the finance minister
for refund of various taxes to exporters. These will be
refunded through the RoDTEP scheme. We will be shortly be
going to the Union Cabinet and notify this,” he told the
House.
“With growing tensions between countries, the government
of India is seeing at opportunities for our manufacturers and
is seized of this to allow our entrepreneurs to expand their
operations and get more and more manufacturing attracted to
India,” he said.
The minister said India cannot afford to be left behind
in the race for technology and therefore government has been
focusing very heavily on skill development to ensure modern
manufacturing technology with 3D manufacturing, artificial
intelligence, better data analytics. These are issues in which
India will have to engage with the globalised world.
“We are very confident that as we engage with such modern
technologies India will probably become a leader in the world
in using these technologies, just like 20 years ago the IT
industry took up this challenge and became a world leader,” he
said.
To a question on people losing jobs, Goyal said there was
no empirical evidence or detailed evidence of workers losing
jobs in a big way.
About codifying labour laws, the minister said, “The
government is engaged with a very constructive dialogue with
all trade union leaders and is trying to codify various laws
relating to labour into a far more crisper, well defined, easy
to navigate, understand and operate set of labour codes which
are coming before the House in the near future.”
He said the same was with the standing committee and
would be taken up soon.
The minister also admitted that in many instances India
has lost competitive advantage which it had for a variety
of reasons.
He assured the House that the government is addressing
various concerns of the manufacturing sector. “We are in
dialogue with the manufacturing industry through various
chambers of industry. I can assure that the government is
seized of the situation and would ensure that we address this
issue.”
The Commerce minister said this is probably being one of
the fastest rollback of taxes, particularly to encourage new
manufacturing, after India has reduced its corporate tax
drastically and a new manufacturing unit would have to pay
only 15 per cent corporate tax.
The new labour codes also provide opportunity for
contractual labour engagement, he said. (PTI)
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