Union Budget 2024: An embodiment of reform, perform, and transform

The Finance Minister presented a comprehensive Budget that laid the foundation for fiscal prudence and sustained long-term growth, embodying the government's commitment to ‘Reform, Perform, and Transform’ during the ‘Amrit Kaal’.

The unwavering focus remained on critical pillars such as job creation, robust investments, inclusive growth, and fiscal responsibility.
 

The key highlight of the Budget is the government’s steadfast dedication to fiscal prudence. The government lowered the gross fiscal deficit target to 4.9 per cent of GDP for FY25 against 5.1 per cent in the interim Budget and 5.6 per cent in FY24 (P), which underscores a sustained effort towards long-term financial stability. The government’s fiscal consolidation strategy appears well-planned, with conservative estimates, projecting tax collection growth at 11 per cent, indicating a tax buoyancy of 1.1. The lower-than-expected gross borrowings further enhance the fiscal outlook, contributing to lower bond yields and avoiding the crowding out of private investments.
 

From a growth standpoint, the aggregate fiscal impulse is neutral. Extra RBI dividend is partly utilised to support spending at lower-end and partly to accelerate fiscal consolidation. Within spending, the capex allocation stayed the same as the interim Budget. The spending in the lower income pockets of the economy including rural, agriculture, and MSMEs has gone up. Also, for the middle class, some income tax relaxation has been provided under the new regime.
 

The overall capex momentum continued- government's total capex spending is projected to grow at 17 per cent year-on-year in FY25, building on an already high base from the previous year. Specifically, allocations for PMAY (housing) is going up by 55 per cent Y-o-Y and for roads and railways, the growth in total allocation is around 2 per cent Y-o-Y in FY25 and allocations for metros have increased by 54 per cent Y-o-Y in FY25.
 

The Budget places a special emphasis on agricultural productivity, employment generation, and environmental sustainability. It encourages a shift in cropping patterns, the adoption of advanced agricultural technologies, and the promotion of export-oriented primary products. In terms of employment, it aligns educational programmes with industry needs and introduces innovative internship schemes to enhance practical skills through job shadowing. The transition towards green energy has already taken strong roots in India and the Budget has taken measures to hasten the process. FM also announced a few tax changes including increase in short term and long term capital gains tax on equity and hike in short term transaction tax on derivatives.
 

Overall, the Budget has built upon the trinity of investment, inclusive growth, and fiscal prudence. Lower cost of capital, globally competitive tax structure, government targeted sectoral incentives and other set of structural reforms carried over the past few years should ensure a meaningful revival in the private capex cycle over the coming years. A period of high public and private capex combined with a commitment towards fiscal prudence could result in improved longevity of India’s growth.
 

From an equity markets standpoint, we don’t think the Budget would materially alter the earnings trajectory in the coming year. From a sectoral point of view domestic cyclicals over the global, fair value sector like IT, select banks and consumer stocks are likely to outperform markets, in our view.
 

Today, the market is as entertaining as Amar Akbar Anthony. There are stocks like Amar, an upright police officer – which have good fundamentals and fair valuations. There are stocks like Anthony – a person with a good heart but taking short cuts representing stocks with good fundamentals but high momentum and high valuations. In the movie eventually, Anthony bhai becomes like Amar and all ends well. Accordingly, we recommend investors pick quality over momentum, high floating stock/ diversified ownership over low floating stock / concentrated holdings and fair valuations over expensive valuations.

The writer is managing director, Kotak Mahindra AMC