Comment: Vinita Bali

The finance minister has presented a balanced budget with projected fiscal deficit at 4.6 per cent in 2011-12 as against 5.1 per cent in 2010-11, which is going to be challenging to achieve. Some of the positives of the budget include a) incentives for food to grow as a result of removal of distribution bottlenecks, acceleration of milk production, setting up of additional mega-parks and storage capacity enhancement with incentives for capital investments in modern cold-storage facilities b) additional allocations for infrastructure and strengthening of Public Private Partnership model c) enhanced allocations for educational institutions like IITs, IIMs and others and d) the reduction in corporate surcharge from 7.5 per cent to 5 per cent. However, the Budget did not give a timeline for GST, which industry was expecting.

 

Vinita Bali, Managing Director, Britannia Industries