NEW DELHI: During the pre-budget meeting with finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday economists stressed on the importance of further reducing the fiscal deficit in the upcoming budget. After the meeting, the economists revealed that the government is also focusing on implementing policies aimed at boosting employment growth.
“...The government has already stated that the fiscal deficit will be lower in the budget. At the same time, employment remained an important issue of discussion,” Ashwani Mahajan, National Co-convener of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch told reporters after the meeting got over. Nagesh Kumar, Director and CEO of the Institute of Studies in Industrial Development, said upon the need for sustaining the growth of the economy by maintaining Capex (capital expenditure) and by encouraging private sector investment and consumption growth. He said it is important to extend production linked incentive (PLI) scheme to other labour intensive sectors like textiles and labour to give impetus to the manufacturing sector and create jobs.
The meeting was attended by the finance secretary and the secretaries of the Departments of Economic Affairs, revenue, financial services, and corporate affairs, as well as the Chief Economic Adviser of India.
Meanwhile, in an another meeting with the revenue secretary, Sanjay Malhotra, industry bodies recommended extension of concessional tax rate of 15% for new domestic manufacturing to give further boost to the government’s “Make in India” initiative. They also suggested streamlining of holding period, uniformity in tax rates across various asset classes, a shift in index years for long-term capital gains etc. to mitigate hardships faced by investors.
In addition, the industrial bodies recommended simplification of the overall TDS/TCS compliance and limiting them to two or three rates. They also suggested introduction of new provision allowing companies incurring losses to set it off against previous years’ profit and concept of group taxation whereby the financials of companies under the same group could be consolidated for paying taxes in India.
Industrial bodies also recommended that the contributions made and deductions claimed for previous years regarding electoral bonds purchased prior to Supreme Court judgement should remain undisturbed.