Expectations are running high that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will present a Budget for Bharat this time around. Bloomberg TV India caught up with Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani to get a perspective on how he perceives the Budget should be. The amount of work that has gone into attracting FDI is “exemplary” and it all depends on how companies capitalise it, he said.
All indications are that the Budget may have a massive social sector and rural thrust. We are in fact calling this a Budget for Bharat. What are your views on that?
I think the government is doing its bit by creating the whole environment in which an entrepreneur can work fearlessly to a certain extent. They are improving the ease of doing business. They want business and economic activity to increase in the country. How we as an entrepreneur can participate in what the government is doing is something which we would be looking forward to.
I expect that the government will announce something in terms of fiscal direction or the strategy on how they want to look at the economy in terms of allocation of resources.
We believe the overall direction is very positive, and it is for entrepreneurs to deliver on that.
The agriculture sector has been in distress over the past couple of years and that of course is having a ripple effect throughout the economy. What can the Centre do to address this particular issue?
I think what the government wants is stability in prices. It wants rural incomes to go up. And I think the government is taking all the measures to make these two things happen.
When the rural incomes go up, consumption will rise. They have to see to it that there is no distress anywhere, especially on the rural side of the economy, and sustain that. So I think the government will increase spending, which I think will be helping the overall economy.
We expect that from June onwards the Pay Commission mandate of salary hike will be disbursed.
And that should help the economy in a certain way. So there are many measures which we are expecting from June onwards that will be quite positive for the economy.
As someone who knows the pulse of the average Indian consumer, what do you think the Centre needs to do to stimulate demand?
I think overall we are seeing a contraction in economy in the form of resources.
The values of the commodities have come down significantly and India works a lot on self-employed people who are dependent on the value chain of the whole commodity cycle. When commodity prices come down, the overall percentage of income that a trader or an agent or a commission agent gets reduce substantially.
Secondly, the agriculture growth in some parts of India has not been up to expectation. Once they improve or we recalibrate to a new world of prices, we will see the economy growing.
But overall we are not seeing any contraction on the demand side on many products. We are not seeing consistency in what is required in a very buoyant market but we see a steady market.
But we expect that the market should improve by June to a level much better than today.
How will the government promise to reduce corporate tax and phase out exemptions at the same time?
I think the government has its own way of looking at things and for us it is all about the cost of doing business. And if the cost of doing business is favourable, the business prospers.
What more can the government do to attract foreign investments?
I think India has done a lot in terms of attracting foreign investment. I think the amount of work that has been done in the last one year is exemplary.
Foreign companies are more excited about India than Indians are. And I don’t think there has ever been an environment like this. It is all about capitalising on what has been done to make this into reality. And we are seeing a lot of traction happening already.