Union Budget 2019: Mixed Fare

It might have been an excellent Interim Budget but it squarely fails to address the issue of jobs or employment in the country. This is the dominant perception among industry leaders, surveyed by BW Businessworld in association with Decode.

As many as 61.4 per cent of surveyed industry leaders feel that this is an excellent interim Budget, and at the same time 66 plus of industry leaders feel that it fails to create employment opportunities in the market.

Interestingly, as many as 71 per cent of respondents feel stand-in  Finance Minister Piyush Goyal is more suitable for the job than other claimants.

Over 80 per cent of the industry leaders feel that the interim Budget is overtly populist. There may have been sops for the middle class and the farmers but that is only good politics, feel 59 per cent of industry leaders, while 29 per cent of industry leaders feel that it’s good economics as well.

Over 70 per cent of industry leaders feel that Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s universal basic income idea is no way superior to the interim Budget ideas.

Over 60 per cent of industry leaders feel that the Corporate issues like lowering taxes were left unaddressed in the interim Budget.

Asked to name three focus areas which didn’t attract due attention in the Interim Budget, industry leaders listed – employment, statrtups and upper middle class and corporate tax slabs. The industry leaders however are unanimous that the interim Budget will help PM Narendra Modi bounce back to power in 2019 elections.

For the BW-Decode survey, we spoke with 340 respondents (industry leaders) from varied sectors across 12 cities in India. The mode of survey was online surveys.

Research Agency: The data compilation and analysis was done byDecode Research and Analytics, led by Havish Madhvapaty and Nakul Bhardwaj (Co-Founders). The survey was administered by Sakhsham Knowledge Services.