FM’s ‘Boring Budget’ sounds interesting for India Inc

Soft boosters to take India ahead in its endeavour to be a $5 trillion economy

Union Budgets in India have been characterised by big bang reforms since the liberalisation of the economy, propelling India to becoming the fastest growing economy in the world. Nearly 3 decades after the ‘New Economic Policy’ was introduced in 1991, India has moved on to becoming a much robust economy, even shrugging off the effects of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). In order to sustain this robustness and growth of the economy, India has moved towards presenting ‘Boring Budgets’. This means setting a precedent of creating a roadmap by making incremental developments instead of high decibel announcements for sectors to absorb and evolve with continuity in policies.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

The Union Budget of 2020 is on the expected lines, providing impetus to key sectors - agriculture, manufacturing and services - that will gradually shore up their fortunes. Boosting these key sectors is crucial to building momentum for a higher growth rate and achieving the dream of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025.

It is heartening to see Finance Minister Smt Nirmala Sitharaman’s maiden full budget take forward this vision and address important issues with a concerted focus on MSMEs, Start-ups, digital inclusion, ease of living and infrastructure investments. These measures apart from income tax cut announced in the budget will revive consumption, increase rural incomes and spurr growth across sectors. These benefits arising from the boost to the core sectors will eventually trickle down to allied industries such as FMCG, automotive, textiles and BFSI and set the tone for a high growth trajectory. Furthermore, special focus on continuation of various efforts announced in last year’s interim budget such as corporate tax cut, simplification of GST will be positive for the economy.

The Budget is also e-commerce positive as it prepares the blueprint for the inclusion of next hundred million consumers with special focus on digital infrastructure, expanding the focus on connecting India and Bharat and giving an impetus to small and medium sellers. Expansion of Mudra (Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency ) scheme for SMBs will spur digitisation and bring them into the digital commerce fold. A historic Rs 10 lakh crore disbursed to SMBs in the past 3-4 years has greatly helped in digitisation and scaling of businesses

This coupled with relaxation/simplification of business-to-consumer exports norms would act as a shot in the arm for the e-commerce sector. These efforts will further boost India’s efforts of achieving a $5 trillion economy with e-commerce becoming one of the major drivers of this growth. Furthermore, India, which makes up to 15% of the global growth currently, will surpass Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030 and be a crucial element in determining the direction of the global economy.