Industry visits to North Block down as biz climate improves: Arun Jaitley

DAVOS: Telling investors about improving ease of doing business in India, Finance Arun Jaitley today quipped that the number of industry leaders visiting his office has come down drastically as they do not need to come to seek permissions.

Addressing a breakfast meeting here on sidelines of WEF, Jaitley also said that it would have been impossible to call industry leaders in India for a meeting at 7.30 am and they might have said this would complicate business.

"Things have changed and now the number of industry leaders visiting North Block has come down as people don't need to visit us anymore," Jaitley said.

At the same time, "we have a Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) who comes first to North Block and leaves the last," he said.

Arvind Subramanian took charge as CEA in October 2014. Jaitley said the government is looking into each of the areas to improve the ease of doing business in the country.

"You can't use that as a tool of arbitrariness for what to allow and what not to allow. One of leaders of the party of previous government wanted to visit a state in Eastern part of the country.

"So, one of the largest ever investment in that state was rejected on environmental considerations on the ground that there was one particular hill which was being worshipped.

"Everyone who worshipped that hill could have been given a job there. That kind of environmental non-clearances were happening," the Finance Minister said.