COMMENT: Sumant Sinha, president, Finance, Aditya Birla Group
Team Bs / Mumbai March 01, 2006
It appears that the UPA government has learnt the lesson that difficult political decisions need to be taken off-line, worked on behind the scenes and implemented when consensus is built.
This explains why the Budget is silent on further reforms in more difficult areas such as FDI, PSU disinvestment, cutting subsidies, labour market reforms, and so on
The Finance Minister has taken advantage of the favourable economic tail-wind to hike spending in the agricultural sector while at the same time pruning the fiscal budget to 3.8 per cent of GDP, and the revenue deficit to 2.1 per cent.
However, the great missed opportunity to my mind, was a lack of pronouncements and spending on infrastructure projects, whether it be roads, ports, airports, power, housing, transportation, etc.
There were references to road building projects under the NHDP and rural roads and electrification, but given the scale and quantum of the infrastructure deficit in India, this was a golden opportunity to publicly shape the government's priorities in this area.
Silent on tough issues
COMMENT: Sumant Sinha, president, Finance, Aditya Birla Group
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