Union Finance Nirmala Sitharaman Tuesday has commenced Pre-Budget Consultations with different stakeholder groups in connection with the forthcoming General Budget 2019-20 in New Delhi.
According to a PIB statement, the second meeting was withthe stakeholder groups from industry, trade and services sectors.
In her opening remarks, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharamansaid that the Central Government has taken several industry specificinitiatives since 2014 that had significantly improved the overall businessenvironment. She said that the emphasis was given to simplification andrationalization of the existing rules and introduction of InformationTechnology to make governance more efficient and effective. As a result, theFinance Minister said that India has considerably improved its ranking to 77thposition among the 190 countries and has kept 23 ranks over its rank of 100 inthe Doing Business Report 2018 as per the World Bank Doing Business (DB)Report, 2019. Sitharaman also mentioned that since 24 % of the total work forcein India is in industrial sector, therefore, in order to reap the benefits ofdemographic dividend, industry should be able to accommodate more workforce.