Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday expanded the scope of ease of doing business to rural enterprises and recognised entrepreneurs making legitimate profits as nation’s wealth creators.
“Ease of doing business and ease of living both should apply to farmers too,” she said in her Budget speech. She assured them that the Centre will work with state governments to allow farmers to benefit from the National Agriculture Market or eNAM, a pan-India electronic trading portal that creates a unified national market for agricultural commodities. Farmers can get a better price for their produce without being exploited by the middleman through eNAM.
“The Agriculture Produce Marketing Cooperatives (APMC) Act should not hamper farmers from getting a fair price for their produce,” Sitharaman said.
The move that will bring markets close to the farms and help farmers in getting the right price for their produce is in sync with the government’s plan of doubling farmers’ income by 2022. It will eliminate middlemen and ease lives of farmers, finance ministry officials said requesting anonymity. Officials said the budget has indirectly prompted the bureaucracy to change its mindset vis-a-vis businesses by underlining that legitimate profit-making is part of the nation building. “This is part of the behavioural change, a nudge...and a change in the approach of bureaucracy towards businesses would effectively make lives of businessmen easy,” one of the officials said.
“All of India’s private sector industries – small, medium or large – have played a substantial role in growing our economy... We do not look down upon legitimate profit earning. Gone are the days of policy paralysis and license-quota-control regimes. India Inc. are India’s job-creators. They are the nation’s wealth creators,” the finance minister said.
{{/usCountry}}“All of India’s private sector industries – small, medium or large – have played a substantial role in growing our economy... We do not look down upon legitimate profit earning. Gone are the days of policy paralysis and license-quota-control regimes. India Inc. are India’s job-creators. They are the nation’s wealth creators,” the finance minister said.
{{/usCountry}}The budget also proposed changes to archaic labour laws to facilitate business.
Rashmi Pradeep, partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, said the labour and employment laws of the country are expected to undergo a significant overhaul over the next few years. “We saw the reaffirmation of the same in the budget. There has been an expectation for some time now that 40 plus central labour laws will be consolidated into 4 codes with at least two of those codes on wages and industrial relations likely to become a reality.” She said they are hopeful that the archaic provisions of employment laws will get weeded out and there will be a meaningful harmonisation of labour laws.