New Delhi, Feb 1 (KNN) Hailing the Union Budget, Dr A Sakthivel, President, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said that the budget has focused on growth potential of the Indian economy by focusing on investment & infrastructure to help the country to remain as a fastest growing economy as projected by the international institutions.

Dr Sakthivel said that many of the changes in the customs duties will help to provide competitiveness to manufacturing and exports besides attempting imports substitution.  

 “The sharp cut in personal income tax and encouragement to savings will add to the purchasing power adding to the demand including of housing which will make our economy much more resilient during such challenging times,” he added.  

The Budget focuses on Ease of Doing Business by removal of large number of compliances converting over 3400 legal provisions into decriminalisation and amending 42 Central Acts.  

The reduction in duty on denatured ethyl alcohol and crude glycerine will help the downstream users in the chemical sector, reduction in duty on key inputs for producing shrimp feed will help the marine exports as will be the dropped in duty on seeds for manufacturing lab grown diamonds and R&D grant for the same to facilitate gems & jewellery exports, said FIEO chief.

The setting up of Unity Mall in States for promotion and sale of One District One Product, GI products and handicraft goods will help in showcasing of such products for benefits of artisans, craftsman and farmers.

However, we need to put such stores at the international airports also to encourage global visibility of such products, said Dr Sakthivel. 

Appreciating the launch of Agri Accelerator Fund for Agri Start-ups and Innovators in the rural areas, setting up of Indian Institutes of Millet and special window under PM Matsya Sampada Yojana for pushing agriculture exports, President of FIEO said that the same needs to be supplemented with a revamped Transport and Marketing Assistance (TMA) scheme looking into the supply side disruptions and logistics challenges.  

B. C. Bhartia, National President and Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has termed the Union Budget as a comprehensive and progressive economic document which ensures development of each and every sector in a structured way and provides ease of doing business to traders, ensuring robust growth in health sector and other services.

“Efforts to benefit the small manufacturing units will leverage the trading sector since the manufacturing goods and consumable income will come to economy and therefore will meet the current challenges of financial liquidity in the trading sector,” they added.

With seven priorities in the budget, the finance minister has tried to create more demand across the country which will be advantageous to the trading community directly or indirectly, said CAIT executives.

The trade leaders said that the finance minister has given ample scope to create more and more entrepreneurship in the country.

On the other hand creation of 5 tax slab in Income Tax and declaring tax exemption upto Rs 7 lakh is a good step, they said.

Bhartia and Khandelwal said against heavy odds and domestic & global challenges, the budget has set future agenda of defined growth of the Indian economy as envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a most impressive way.

However, CAIT regrets that nothing concrete announcement has been made regarding simplification & rationalization of GST tax structure which is far away fr0m "one market-one tax" principle and has highly disappointed the business community.  (KNN Bureau)