The Union Budget presented by the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, lacks focus and is not growth-oriented, and it offers little comfort to the public and makes no attempt to give a direction to the Indian economy.
This was the view which emerged by and large at a panel discussion on the Union Budget organised in the Gitam Institute of Management on Tuesday by The Hindu in association with Indian Bank and Gitam.
Prof. K. Sivarama Krishna, Dean and Principal of the institute, welcomed the gathering. Prof. G. Subrahmanyam, Vice-Chancellor of Gitam University, in his opening remarks said that everyone had expected the Finance Minister to raise the income-tax exemption limit to Rs 3 lakh per annum, but Mr Mukherjee had set it at Rs 2 lakh, which was disappointing. Mr P. Seshagiri Rao, Deputy General Manager of Indian Bank, gave a presentation on the growth of the bank during the past 105 years and appealed to the students to avail themselves of education loans.
Mr G.V.L. Satya Kumar, Deputy Chairman of Visakhapatnam port, spoke on the infrastructure and logistics-related issues in the Budget.
He said performance of infrastructure bonds was not very encouraging and therefore public-private participation model should be followed for infra projects.
Prof. D. Harinarayana, pro Vice-Chancellor of Gitam University, said that broadly four macro targets had to be kept in mind while judging any budget – growth, equity, employment and price stability. On all the four fronts, he said, it was only an “incremental budget” and clearly lacking in policy direction.
Mr T.K Chand, Director (Commercial) of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and President of the Visakhapatnam chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industry, said the emphasis of the Budget was more on “fiscal consolidation and price stability rather than growth.” Mr O. Naresh Kumar, CEO of Symbiosys Technologies, a local IT company, said the Finance Minister had dealt the cruellest blow to the IT industry, and remarked that MAT on software exports and service tax in the domestic IT sector would stifle the industry. “Many of the units in IT special economic zones have come up on the promise of tax holiday for 15 years or so and it is simply not fair to change the rules of the game midway. The service tax hike will prove very costly to the domestic IT industry. The spectacular growth of IT industry in the country in the initial phase was due to non-intervention by the Government. Now the Government seems bent on finishing it,” he said.
Mr V. Chandrasekhar, a chartered accountant, spoke about the taxation issues. He said the Budget would hit consumption adversely and also savings and many of the proposals of Mr Mukherjee would not achieve the intended results. “The Finance Minister should have looked for better alternatives. It is also not known how long it will take for the Government to introduce the Direct Tax Code and Goods and Service Tax,” he said. He also found fault with the Rajiv Gandhi Equity Savings Scheme in the budget.
Ms P. Kavitha, Commerical Tax Officer, spoke about tax-related issues and the impact of the budget on women. The panelists later answered the queries of students on various issues.