Decisive measures vital to revive India’s growth
Deccan ChronicleThe Union Budget 2020-21, to be presented to Parliament by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday, February 1, comes at a time when the Indian economy is facing headwinds from a growth slowdown, on account of both domestic and global factors. CII has suggested that the 2019-20 fiscal target may be relaxed by 0.5 per cent to 0.75 per cent, which will give the government additional fiscal space. Further, expenditure rationalisation is suggested through subsidy reduction via measures such as Aadhaar enabled direct benefit transfer for food, fertilisers and kerosene subsidy, urea price decontrol and pruning the number of Centrally For revival of demand, CII has suggested rationalisation of personal income tax, measures to boost rural income and to support the real estate and housing sectors. Suggested measures include permitting usage of ECBs to fund land acquisition; granting of infrastructure status to integrated townships and overall housing sector to allow developers to access priority funding at lower cost; releasing additional land parcels through an effective and transparent mechanism to give a push to affordable housing in urban areas. These include decriminalisation of business laws for improving trust between the government and business; measures to reduce the cost of equity capital; a roadmap for the convergence of all the tax rates at 15 per cent and the formation of an expert panel under CBDT to mediate disputes at the assessment stage in a time-bound manner.