Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presents the Union Budget at Parliament in New Delhi. (PTI)
KOCHI: The Budget has adopted simple strategies to keep enthusiasm high. The government has put in unwavering efforts to reach out to the underserved and provide them with financial services.There is focus on key social spending such as education and healthcare thereby improving the quality of life of lower income groups.The plan to revamp gold monetisation scheme is a welcome move.
The general public has a total of 21,000 tonne of gold in their custody. Through this process, the idle asset at home will become productive, energising the economy. This will bring in household gold into the market, thus reducing the need for imports, conserving valuable foreign exchange. The focus given to the agro sector- related infrastructure will go a long way in placing India as a major producer and exporter of agro and processed food sector.
Announcement of 99 cities for Smart City Programme, online loan sanctioning facility to revamp the speeding up of loan given by the banks to MSME, the contribution of 12 per cent of wages of new employees extending to all sectors, reducing women’s contribution to PF to eight per cent for the three years of their employment with no reduction in the employers' contribution, introduction of facilities and technology leading to reduced waste in the farm sector, boost given to the fishery, aquaculture and animal husbandry sectors and applying 25 per cent tax rates to MSME with a new threshold of `250 crore, will increase India’s competitive advantage as the headline tax rates are falling across the world.
(A Sakthivel, Regional Chairman, Federation of Indian Export Organisations)
