The Hindu Business Line : `A positive Budget'

On the whole, it is a positive Budget. The direction is correct and on desirable lines. The impact of the levies proposed will iron itself out in the overall scenario during the course of the year. The Finance Minister had a difficult choice: the overall growth of the economy has been robust while the state of agriculture not-too-satisfactory.

The plight of the farmers, with reports of many of them committing suicide, is well known.

Increased allocations for rural, health and education sectors therefore will hopefully take care of the inadequacies in these sectors to a large extent. After all the larger section of the population, living in rural areas, is still dependent on agriculture.

The accent on development of infrastructure too is welcome as a lot still remains to be done in this sector, more so because, let alone achieving projected higher growth through more investments, even sustaining the current level of growth might be difficult in the absence of proper infrastructure.

Mr Sanjeev Goenka, Vice-Chairman, RPG Group

The Union Budget for 2007-08 is on the expected lines. Realistically speaking, this is the best possible Budget one can hope to have under the given circumstances.

The priorities are clearly defined as is evident from the Finance Minister's accent on agriculture, education and health sectors.

There have been attempts to curb inflation, through indirect taxes though. The decision to develop Mumbai as a world-class financial centre is particularly laudable.

There is a proposal for a special fund for the rubber industry on the lines of the tea industry.

Hopefully, this will benefit the tyre sector. The emphasis to boost infrastructure sector is expected to trigger cash flow into the power sector, including power generation and transmission.