Monsoon improves prospects for agriculture, economy: Arun Jaitley

San Francisco: Progress of monsoon in India has improved compared to the predictions, bettering prospects  for agriculture and putting the economy on a stronger footing, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said. Speaking at a luncheon meeting organised by CII in partnership with US-India Business Council yesterday, Jaitley  said "the monsoon prediction is improving and with it the  prospects of the agriculture sector doing better, which would  put the economic growth prospects on an even better footing". 

The industry body release said the Finance Minister, who is on a visit to the US, "alluded to the fact that the  manufacturing sector had started to do much better after a  protracted period of slowdown". After slow progress, the southwest monsoon has advanced rapidly in India. Earlier this month, Indian Meteorological Department had lowered its monsoon forecast from 93 per cent  to 88 per cent of the Long Period Average, with north-west  region of the country expected to be hit the most. 

On demand revival, Jaitley said "micro attention" was being paid to stalled projects and a pick up in that area  would be helping demand for industrial products. A benign  inflation situation could further allow softening of interest  rates, he added.  He also highlighted the improved economic and investment  conditions in India, the chamber said. Companies which attended the luncheon meet included  Microsoft, Applied Materials, Amazon, Oracle, Hewlett Packard,  Visa, Franklin Templeton, Google, Cisco, First Solar, Aemetis,  Ebay, Qualcomm, Blackberry and San Disk.  Finance Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, while answering  specific questions from US companies stressed that the  government is working to create an organised way to deal with  change not just in policy regime but administration as well. 

Government efforts are "work in progress" though there is  already significant improvement on contentious issues like  implementing a direct tax regime and GST regime, smoothening  taxation disputes, easing land acquisition and labour  regulations and so forth