BW Businessworld organised a post-budget roundtable, powered by NewsX and BW-TV, on Friday at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The panelists who participated in the "Personal Finance" segment included Pratik Bhartia, Chief Business Officer, RupeePower; Raj Thadani, Senior Vice-President, Jet Systems; and Sanjiv Govila, SEBI Registered Investment Advisor.
The session was moderated by Nirmal Prakash, Managing Director, Delta ID India. Prakash started off by saying, "A lot of goodies were expected from the budget, I personally do not see any opportunity where a common man can make any savings any investment. Gentlemen, what's your take on the personal finance sector in the budget?
Bhartia said, "I would give it a three star out of five, it was a good budget, and I feel the Finance Minister is kicking in a lot of positivity in people rather than instilling fear for the economy to become financially inclusive and fin-tech friendly. He has not given many exemptions but I would like to mention that not removing the previously -given exemptions were also not removed. Now that's also a fair game.
Thadani said, "In India there are not many taxpayers, and the plan is to make more & more people join the taxpaying brigade. The idea is not to make people fearful, now it's like people retaining some faith that there won't be much scrutiny for those who have never paid taxes, that's a great way to pave a road for people to make a clean start."
He added, "This was a very balanced budget. I would give it a 4 star out of 5. Also he shared his views about the healthcare and real estate sector. He said that we are hoping that banks should be quite faster to support people and healthcare will also get some important boost from this budget. For instance, the Rs5 lakh tax slab people can easily avail the tax exemption for serving premiums for health care insurance, if they pay Rs.25K per months to the insurance company."
The third panelist, Govila, said: "Tax baits have been given to some sectors such as Infra, Housing, Medical-healthcare, but since Budget is usually assumed to be a tax-cut thing, I would like to say there are a lot of other things also to look at. This budget is not according to our expectation, ex-servicemen I'm speaking about, there is no motivation for retired faujis but from a personal finance point of view (saving/investment) then I would give it a 4 & half point out of 5. See, even if you give tax reserves or tax exemptions,which is an icing on the cake but you don't buy a cake for the icing."