Chambers of Commerce and industrialists in Tamil Nadu gave a positive score to the Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday. At the budget viewing session that was organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), its Deputy Chairman, Southern Region, Vikram Kirloskar, said capital gains tax relief for land pooling to build Amaravati could be replicated in other newly forming cities. “There was not much on environment issues and that was disappointing,” he said.
B. Santhanam, president and managing director, Flat Glass – South Asia, Malaysia & Egypt, Saint-Gobain India Pvt Ltd felt that it was a steady and stable budget with government investments to spur growth of manufacturing. S. Chandramohan, president & Group CFO, TAFE Ltd commented that the fiscal deficit target as well as the market borrowing will make money
The Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry expressed concerns that the manufacturing sector, including the auto sector, did not get its share of attention in the budget. Its president Ram Venkataramani, said, “Not enough encouragement given to R&D and Innovation, which are keys to future growth. A ‘Scrappage Policy’ for old polluting vehicles would have helped stimulate growth in the auto industry.”
The Finance Minister also doled out a slew of incentives for the start-up community. Commenting on this, Gopal Srinivasan, chairman, Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, said, “Coming to start-ups, the Budget has extended the period for which the profits are exempt from Income Tax. In addition, carry forward of losses are permitted even if the promoter’s holdings fall below 51%, so long as they do not sell their shares.” He added that this is an important development, since the promoter shareholding often gets diluted when a Start-up raises multiple rounds of equity.
C.K. Ranganathan, chairman & managing director, CavinKare Pvt. Ltd, said, “Though the budget could not stick to the promise of gradual reduction of corporate tax from 30% to 25%, it has reduced the same to 25% to the MSME sector which forms lion’s share of the corporate.”
M. Rafeeque Ahmed president of The Southern India Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SICCI), said that the announcement of reduction of tax for MSME and also the reduction of tax rates for individual having taxable slab between ₹2.5 lakh and ₹5 lakh from 10% to 5% is a good move.
N.V. Srinivasan, national president, Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, said that the FDI liberalisation announced in the Budget should be fast tracked and to give special focus to sectors like defence, aerospace and digital space.
