Despite a substantial savings to the national exchequer by way of low global oil prices, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely has not increased allocation to the irrigation and agriculture sectors, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has said.
Reacting to the Union Budget, Siddaramaiah said fund allocations to key sectors such as micro irrigation, nutrition, and drinking water has been sharply reduced from previous years.
“Karnataka amended the APMC Act long back and the current Central government push is likely to help farmers get more for their produce,” he said.
Siddaramaiah said the budget painted a general picture and is bereft of plans for boosting the farming sector. Terming the budget as ‘neither farmer nor people friendly’, he said it offered nothing to cheer for distressed farmers.
Jaitely has set aside negligible allocation for Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Prgoramme (AIBP) and cut funding for centrally sponsored schemes. For instance, he said funding for Integrated Child Development Service programme has been reduced from ₹16,361 crore in 2014-15 to ₹13,888 crore in 2016-17.
Chambers happy Chambers of commerce in the State welcomed the budget which promises to contain Fiscal Deficit for FY17 to 3.5 per cent and targeting to further prune it to 3 per cent in the next two years.
Anuj Sharma, President, BCIC said “The Budget has a slew of policy oriented announcements and targets set for infrastructure, public sector, social sector, manufacturing sector, finance and tax reforms, agriculture sector and investment on education, skilling which we believe will spur overall economic growth as it clearly sets the right tone for the next the three years”.
Ease of doing business Tallam R Dwarakanath President, FKCCI, said the budget has laid stress on governance and ease of doing business, relief to small tax payers, increasing the turnover limit under presumptive taxation scheme under section 44 AD of the Income Tax to Rs 2 crore which will bring a big relief to a large number of assesses in the MSME category.
“There has been a marginal decrease in corporate tax but at the same time various exemptions are being removed,” he said.
Trickle-down effect VK Dikshit, president, Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association (Kassia), said the finance minister had pinned his hopes on trickle-down effect to spur the growth of the MSME sector. He added that it did not initiate any measures that would have direct impact on the small scale industry in the short-term.
Dikshit said the food processing sector will get a huge fillip from the proposal to permit 100 per cent FDI through the Foreign Investment Promotion Board route for marketing of food products produced and processed in India and the budget has also rightly attempted to address a core demand of the MSME sector in introducing transparency in public procurement by DG&SD.