Maran praises Sinha's IT proposals
Former industry minister Murasoli Maran today congratulated Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha in the Lok Sabha for simplifying the income tax
structure.
Participating in the resumed debate on the Union Budget, he wanted the new one-page income tax return filing forms to be printed
in all state languages, including Tamil, to enable any literate person to handle it.
Maran also thanked the finance minister for continuing some of the previous government's stated policies like delicensing of the
petroleum sector.
However, he criticised Sinha for not spelling out the policy initiatives on the opening up of the insurance sector to the Indian private companies and the government's intention to slash the holdings in public sector units to 26 per cent.
Maran sought to know the extent of foreign tie-ups to be allowed in Indian insurance firms. Likewise, he also asked the
government to state openly whether even profit-making public sector
units would be privatised.
The former industry minister smelt a rat in the finance minister's much-touted move to reduce the fiscal deficit.
According to him, this was only a jugglery with figures as the finance minister
had cut the transfers to the states. This, he feared, could force the states to come and crawl before the Centre the next
financial year.
Maran said the indirect taxes proposed by Sinha could fan inflation. It could also reverse some of the long-term goals like value addition of the farm produces to help the farmers get
better returns for their output.
UNI
Budget '98
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