The Indian Finance Minister, Arun Jaitely, is all set to present the union budget 2018-19 tomorrow. The budget session will start at 11:00 AM tomorrow. The Indian stock market was trading lower than its usual run, a day before the budget. The market is abuzz with many rumors about the sops and surprises that the finance minister might drop at different sectors tomorrow.
“Investors in India grew cautious ahead of the Union Budget 2018-2019, which will be presented by the finance minister Arun Jaitley in the parliament tomorrow, 1 February 2018. Stock markets, which have been trading in negative territory since yesterday, hit more than a one-week low as selling pressure intensified. Both the benchmark Sensex and the Nifty finally closed the day marginally in the red. Announcements made in tomorrow’s budget coupled with an assessment of their impact on an individual as well as a corporate level, are expected to influence investor sentiment in the following days. While banking and financial services stocks eked out marginal gains, healthcare, metals and FMCG stocks bore the brunt of the bears,” Karthikraj Lakshmanan, Senior Fund Manager-Equities, BNP Paribas Mutual Fund.
Here is what the market experts say about the expectations from the budget 2018:
Deepak Bhawnani, CEO of Alea Consulting, states said that he has seen the increment in rates of Service Tax go from 5% – 8% – 10% – 12% – 14% – 15% and now to 18% under GST. He observed that given the consistently increasing contribution of the Service industry to the Exchequer, the Government should consider reducing the GST rate for consulting and professional services firms, to a lower slab. This would, in turn, encourage more companies to use the services of consulting firms for risk management and compliance, which would further mitigate corporate frauds. Mr. Bhawnani who has three decades of experience in the risk consulting industry added that the slump in the growth of real estate can gain impetus if tax rebates are enhanced on Home Loans thus encouraging honest taxpayers to invest more in the sector. Both these initiatives would contribute to India’s growth and help achieve the 7%+ GDP targets indicated going forward.
Ronesh Puri, MD, Executive Access – Executive Search Firm, said, ” Reforms to help the business grow which consequently will lead to increase in jobs. Though we have made some progress in ease of doing business much more needs to be done as there are still too many procedures and too much permission from multiple authorities. We need more and faster action. Reducing taxes will help as will make GST compliances easier and less cumbersome. For a small business, we need urgent and immediate action to make it easier and simpler. It is far too complex and confusing for them. We need to simplify compliances and as if jobs are to be created then we need to make it easy for new businesses to be incubated. Indians are good entrepreneurs and we need to unleash this potential instead of shackling it. Also, far greater investment in education, health, and infrastructure will help as these have been neglected for too long. The problem that needs to be tackled is to make our youth employable which is just not happening today. Most of the educational institutions are producing unemployable youths and the regulatory authorities are hindrances to growth and employment generation instead of being proactive and helpful. Our syllabuses and rules and regulations are outdated and serve no purpose. Let this be a game changer budget rather than more of the same as this is an opportune time to think big”.
