Indian govt easing compliance burden for biz: Nirmala Sitharaman

INTERNATIONAL DESK: India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said business entities with strong corporate governance attract investors and company secretaries play a key role in making compliance easy for firms.

Speaking at the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI), the finance minister said the government has been reducing compliance burden for businesses, making it easier to follow rules, which in turn helped Indian firms in attracting investors’ attentions.

She said good governance is also the responsibility of the company secretary (CS) by making laws easy and accessible. “The role of a company secretary is to make it easy, to make it ready, for a company to follow the guiding principles,” she said.

Citing example of timeless classics, she said these books are known for their simplicity and easy to understand, therefore, continue to capture the imagination of people even today. “That, which is straight. That, which is so easy to understand, and that which doesn’t require too many interpreters,” she said.

A CS should make things so simple and easier for the company that it would be “tempting” to comply, she added.

Sitharaman said Prime Minister Modi has been very clear about ease of doing business from 2014, and also before, when he was in Gujarat. “The attempt is to make it easy, make it simple for law abiding wealth-creators to do their business and to prosper,” she said.

She said “well managed companies” which are more transparent in their functioning, and have good governance principles, are attracting investors. (Hindustan Times)