From industry standpoint, budget can be termed as lackluster: Savan Godiawala

The Finance Minister tried to achieve significant inclusiveness in budgetary allocation across agricultural, rural, social, education, infrastructure, financial reforms, governance etc. While the minister deserves credit for the balancing act and accelerated budgetary allocation across these sectors with longer term plan in many areas, industry players may not be too happy with their expectations.
 
The budget failed to address industry issues like rationalisation of taxes in SEZ, higher infra spend in developing industry regions/parks like PCPIR, deal with inverted duty structure, continued incentive for R&D and capital expenditure by way of tax deduction and accelerated depreciation.
 
The emphasis on no retrospective tax amendments, lower rate of taxation for new companies, and reduction of long term capital gain period to two years for unlisted companies are welcome proposals; however, keeping the corporate tax rate unchanged except for companies with a turnover of less Rs 5 crores would be unpleasing to the corporate sector.
   
Also, dividend on high net worth investors, who are promoters in many cases, would amount to double taxation, which could be a cause of worry to rejuvenate the capital markets. Allocation of funds for capitalisation of banking sector could be a bit too less than actual need for the industry and desired liquidity in the system. Overall, from the industry standpoint, the budget can be termed as lackluster, in spite of several measures proposed for inclusive and robust GDP growth keeping in control the fiscal prudence.
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Savan Godiawala is the senior director, Deloitte in India