Nagpur: Finance Minister at the start of his budget speech gave a signal for manyfold changes across all sectors in his budget speech. However Minister predominantly focussed of launching of various target oriented schemes which would have direct effect on rural population of the country. The Minister needs to be applauded for his effort in restricting Fiscal Deficit at 3.20% & Revenue Deficit at 1.90% inspite of tremendous increase in various allocations as well as several direct taxes sops and no simultaneous change in indirect taxes.
The Minister has made it very clear through his budget speech regarding what the Government will look after in the coming days. Individual taxation, Black Money, Political Funding and rural development seems to be on the priority list of the Government. Record allocation in agricultural credit and MNREGA are welcome steps. Budget gives major surprise to all the Political Parties who have been relying on anonymous donations till now.
Minor tweaking of Individual tax slabs benefiting small tax payers and drastic 5% reduction for Corporate MSME will be definitely welcomed by the common man, however the Capital Market would be least affected by budget 2017 and hence might show no response to the budget announcements. Minister has also accepted the long pending demands of Income Tax practitioners regarding extension of period to avail MAT credit as well as shifting of Base year from 01/04/1981 to 01/04/2001 for Indexation purposes.
All in all Finance Minister has presented a robust, transparent and planned budget without any populist schemes being rolled out. This will give optimism amongst the stakeholders with increased support to government activities by common man in near future.
