The Union Finance Minister, with all his good intentions, has failed to tackle some of the basic issues such as MAT impeding the growth of the industry. He should have done much more to spur economic growth, as his party got a clear mandate and there were no coalition compulsions, according to O Naresh Kumar, CEO of Symbiosys Technologies, an IT company.

He was speaking at a seminar on the Union Budget, organised by the Visakhapatnam zone of the Confederation of Indian Industry and presided by GVL Satya Kumar, Deputy Chairman of the Visakhapatnam port trust and Vizag CII, here on Monday. He said there was nothing much in the Budget for the IT sector and it was also disappointing on the issue of retrospective taxation.

“Take for instance the IT sector. India is the second largest internet user in the world and we are heavily dependent on imported software. The FM should have set up a fund for promoting indigenous software. Our electronic imports are rising all the time, yet there is no move to promote the local industry. In other sectors too, he was content with piece-meal changes and there were no bold moves to give a clear-cut direction to the economy,” he said.

He also remarked that the FM had announced as many as 30 projects with a paltry allocation of ₹100 crores and “the FM took as much as one hour to read out the details of the schemes. One can only call it mere tokenism.”

The other representatives from the industry were kinder to the FM and said he had done his best under the circumstances and sought to give a direction to the economy.

S S Lamba, the Managing Director of Eisai Pharma, said the FM had mentioned in his speech that the SEZs in the country were contributing to one-third of the exports and steps would be taken to revive them.

He also said only one-third of the SEZs in the country were operational and therefore the Government should have offered more financial incentives to revive them. The issue of MAT should also have been addressed.

Neeraj Sarada, Director of Sarada Metals and Alloys Limited, complimented the FM for extending the tax holiday to power plants up to 2017.

 

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