Finance Secretary T V Somanathan has underlined the need for improving the fiscal position of the government through reforms in farm, food and fertilizer subsidies so that additional funds can be generated for development of infrastructure and education system. He said that farm, food and fertilizer reforms are administratively easy but politically difficult in view of the ramifications.
On the other hand, Somanathan said reforms in education and infrastructure are easy to announce but difficult to implement administratively as cooperation of states and other stakeholders becomes necessary. On financial sector reforms, he said the government has already announced privatisation of two public sector banks and one public sector general insurance company. He said most of the public sector banks would be privatised eventually as announced by the government.
With regard to nagging issues related to Goods and Services Tax (GST), Finance Secretary said many of the glitches have been fixed. He expressed hope that the revenue collection from GST would see improvement going forward.