Former finance minister P. Chidambaram on Saturday criticised what he felt was the marginalisation of the non-income tax payers by the incumbent Arun Jaitley, adding that India requires the effort of all sections of society to grow as a country.
"The budget makes some very tall claims. The Finance Minister began with a gibe, that he inherited an economy with the sentiment of doom and gloom. But just five minutes later in his speech, he acknowledged the numbers put forward by the Central Statistics Organisation. That office is part of his government. If he believes those numbers for 2014-15, he must also believe the numbers for 2013-14. The CSO says that in 2013-14, growth had dramatically recovered from 5.1 percent to 6.9 percent. So when the UPA left office, the economy was well on its way to recovery. It is unfortunate that the government refuses to acknowledge this," Chidambaram told the media.
"It is possible that the growth for this year will pick up to 7.4 percent. But to claim that the growth next year will cross eight percent is a tall claim. For this country to grow, everybody must pull their weight together. This country cannot grow only on the shoulders on corporates and income tax payers," he added.
Chidambaram also accused Jaitley of facilitating the corporate sector at the expense of the poor.
"The Finance Minister says that the effective corporate rate is about 23 percent. That yielded in the current year Rs 4,26,000 crore. But they are proposing that starting next year, for the next four years they are providing relief to the corporate sector of Rs 20,000 crores. However, large sections of society have been left out in the cold," he said.
Earlier in the day, Jaitley presented the NDA government's first full-fledged budget in the Lok Sabha, saying that the economic environment in the country is far more positive than in the recent past, and added that the Centre's objective is to improve quality of life and to pass benefits to the common man.
The Finance Minister said that the government proposes to keep the fiscal deficit target of 3.9 per cent for year 2015-16, 3.5 per cent in 2016-17 and 3 per cent in 2017-18. He said Goods and Services Tax (GST) will be rolled out next year. The government is intending to achieve the fiscal deficit target of three per cent in the next three years.
The government also proposed to reduce corporate tax from 30 percent to 25 percent in next four years. Jaitley said taxation is an instrument of socio economic engineering and none filing of returns or filing of returns with adequate returns will attract rigorous imprisonment.
