Interim Budget to give impetus to the economy: CII

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Nortern Region on Tuesday lauded the interim Budget presented by the Union Finance Minister P. Chidambram which was presented on Monday.

"Mr Chidambaram's focus on checking the fiscal deficit at 4.6% for the current fiscal year is really commendable," said Jayant Davar , Chairman CII Northern Region & Co-Chairman and Managing Direcrtor, Sandhar Technologies Ltd while commenting on the Interim Budget.

CII believes that the priority of the new government, post General Elections 2014 will be reviving the economic growth. Thus, some of the key takeaways of the 10-point vision laid out by the Finance Minister will form basis of the regular budget to be presented by the next government. The implementation of GST along with many pending economic legislations should be one of the priorities for the next government, said Davar.

Focus on manufacturing and reviving the manufacturing sector was one of the key theme of this year's Interim budget, said Zubin Irani , Deputy Chairman, CII Northern Region & President, Building & Industrial Systems (India), United Technologies India Pvt Ltd. The decision to reduce the excise duty by 2 per cent to 10 per cent on all goods falling under Chapter 84 & 85 of the schedule to the Central Excise Tariff Act is a welcome move. This will provide necessary impetus to the manufacturing sector, which witnessed growth contraction during the year, he added.

Automobile industry is one of the major part of the manufacturing sector and boosting the growth of this sector through the reduction of excise duty will have a multiplier effect on the other related sectors, particularly the MSMEs. The decision to reduce the excise duty on small cars, motorcycles, scooters and commercial-vehicles (CVs) by 4 per cent to 8per cent, sports utility vehicles (SUV)s from 30 per cent to 24 per cent is a major relief for this sector.

Alok Sharma , Co-Chairman, Regional Committee on MSME & Managing Director and CEO, Forge (India) Pvt Ltd said the provision of initial contribution of Rs 100 crore towards the corpus of the 'India Inclusive Innovation Fund' would certainly promote grassroot innovations in the MSME sector. In addition, proposal to create Research Funding Organisation to fund research projects and contributions made to the orgnaisation eligible for tax benefits will drive the innovation and research in the country.

Man Mohan Singh Kohli , Chairman, CII Chandigarh Council & CEO, Kalyan Singh Darshan Singh (Hotel Aroma) said the focus on the skill development is worth appreciating with transfer of additional Rs 1,000 crores to NSD Trust during 2014-15, apart from earlier commitment of Rs 1,000 crores will definitely facilitate in skilling the thousands of youths and also make them employable.

Sharing the northern perspective of the Union Budget, Pikender Pal Singh , Regional Director, CII Northern Region said that allocation Rs 1,200 crore of central assistance to Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand including the northeast states in this financial year will help these hilly states to finance their development plans.

Exempting loading, unloading, packing, storage and warehousing of rice from service tax is also a welcome decision, he added.