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Showing posts from February, 2017

Budget 2017

Arun Jaitley last week presented his fourth Union Budget. Expectations were high and so were the challenges, and it was indeed a tough task for the Finance Minister to play a balancing act between growth stimulus and fiscal consolidation. The Budget places a lot of emphasis on agriculture, rural economy, social sector investments and infrastructure, but it is not at the cost of fiscal prudence. There is no attempt to resort to blatant populism, but needs of the poor and the underprivileged are taken care of. Key reform measures, including revamping of political funding and phasing out of  FIPB, are also proposed. Overall, Jaitley has managed to hit a fine balance to a fair degree. As far as the MSME sector is concerned, it is a big relief to see the Budget coming up with several sops for the sector. One of the major announcements is reduction of corporate tax from 30 percent to 25 percent for those units whose annual turnover is less than Rs 50 crore. According to available data, out