New Delhi:
Virtually rebutting criticism by leading banker Deepak Parekh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the government is being criticised for rather being “too fast”.
While Jaitley parried a question on Parekh’s criticism yesterday that impatience has begun creeping in among businessmen as nothing has changed on ground in the first nine months of the Narendra Modi government, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said: “I think the Finance Minister has spoken in a way about it.”
Launching the e-biz portal of the government, Jaitley said: “We have to actually see what are the various steps that we have taken and the community of investors both within and outside the country watch us.
“In the first instance, what is the credibility of this government. What is the decisiveness of our decision making process? What is the process by which government treats business? And it’s an irony that after having seen lethargic governments, you today have a government which is criticised for being too fast.”
He made no direct reference to Parekh’s comments but said that government has chose the ordinance route to expedite legislative changes to promote businesses.
“Why you bring ordinances, you should wait till the cows come home and everybody can be settled and decisions can be taken. So in fact one great criticism which has come is you should have waited and not acted fast,” he said.
Separately Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal also dismissed the industrialist’s criticism saying share prices of Parekh’s own group companies HDFC and HDFC Bank have gone up and the stock market only reflects improvement in economy. He further said he doesn’t know if the banker had any personal reason for making such comments.
