Extend automatic sharing of tax information to all nations: Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu

India has strongly argued for widening the agenda for sharing of information on tax issues and has called for holding a roundtable on infrastructure to deepen investment in this critical sector. Railway minister Suresh Prabhu, India’s sherpa for the G20 meeting, raised several issues to highlight the concerns of emerging economies.

In an interview to TOI on the sidelines of the G20 sherpas meeting in the Turkish resort town of Bodrum, Prabhu details the agenda ahead for the G20 to lift inclusive growth globally. Excepts:

What were the key issues that you raised?

India is chairing the emerging economies group. Before the G20, we meet informally as a group so that we can more or less have a similar position.We expressed our concerns and one of the issues that we have talked about is trade. We are seeing a worrying phenomenon globally , that the share of global trade is declining. We need to find out the reasons, structural or otherwise, which are contributing to it. It has been agreed that we will look into it. For India, it is a great opportunity because we are growing at 7.5% without global trade growing.

What has been the movement on anti-corruption and tax issues?

This is something which has been our very strong stand.The prime minister took it up in Australia. I had also taken it up. We are repeating that. There are two things.One is BEPS (Base Erosion and Price Shifting). It is a tax evasion if not a black money issue. Two, automatic sharing of information, which has significantly changed the way global black money is generated.

Today , unless you have a treaty, you don’t get information. Even if you have a treaty, they say you must show criminality then only you can get information. This automatic sharing of information which G20 has agreed…

I requested that this be extended to all countries of the world so that we can have something like a UN mandate. Every country will be sharing, so, automatically , the concept of tax haven will disappear. We should try to make it a universal convention like we have so many other conventions.

What was the discussion on infrastructure?

I had said in December that what we should do is to organize a round table. See, there is a very unique phenomenon.On one hand, there is so much of liquidity. Global economy is not expanding but there is so much of liquidity globally . At the same time, one of the rea sons why global economy is not expanding is that demand is not there and that too in developed countries. We said why not create demand by investing in infrastructure.Some countries said we should try to find bankable projects but we said what is bankability . If you take 30 years time frame, bankability will always be there. We have said there could be a number of roundtables to bring all the stakeholders in infrastructure -investors, countries like India which has projects where matchmaking would be possible.

Was there any discussion on skills?

Thanks to India, G20 has taken an initiative called G20 skills.So if you can link the need, for example in Japan, there is a need for nurses as people are getting old. If you can link need with availability , then we can train our nurses here for Japan but Japan will have to change rules of migration. We are very keen on employment.India has been saying that for quality youth, jobs should be created. But India has reservations which I strongly put forward that there should not be any monitoring because the G20 is saying that we will monitor it. There is no proper database about it, no proper method, so unless you develop those methodologies transparently , there is no point.