Expression Of Government’s Intentions More Than The Allocation Of Funds

This year, BW Businessworld’s Post Budget 2017 Panel Discussion kicked started with an exciting session of CEOs from various corporate houses on – ‘What they expected from the Union Budget and what are the take-aways,’ at Trident, BKC, Mumbai.

Deliberations of the panel was somewhat mixed.

To begin with a positive take-away from the Budget, Shiv Nandan Negi, Co-founder, MintWalk said, “The drive towards digital adoption is much required and will encourage digital India in metropolitan cities and will increase more cash transactions in rural India.”

Krishna Choudhary, Director & Co–Founder, Rashi Peripherals felt that the government should have taken little more care in the implementation part of the demonetization efforts it had initiated. Ultimately, a good initiative hampered the good intentions.

However, Kunal Bajaj, CEO and founder of ClearFunds.com felt that the government’s intention through the Budget was in the right direction. “There are so many good initiatives in the Budget to boost the MSME, skilled segments and the takeaway from the budget is extremely good and positive.”

Akash Rai, Head Business Acquisitions and Strategic Alliances EFC Land Development and Infrastructure expected the government to act little more in favor of capital allocations. He said, “The policies adopted through the Budget are not been useful in the practical sense to solve the grass-root problems.” He felt that the micro level gaps had to be looked at.

However, the panel felt that everything the corporate world want to achieve is not possible through Budget provisions and allocations. The corporates need to walk the talk in the direction of nation building, the panel felt.

Moderated by Roy Varghese, Senior Editorial Lead of BW Businessworld, the CEOs panel felt that the Budget 2017 has been more about the expression of the government’s financial intentions than the allocation of funds. May be it is looking at the forthcoming state elections in 5 of the states, the panel felt. The appeasement of scheduled cast/tribe and minorities through the Budget allocations in the back drop of the forthcoming elections are taken by the panelists with a pinch of salt.

Although the government has maintained a proper balance between funding underprivileged sectors of the country and distribution of taxes, the correlation with long term performance is close to a nil. Few of the panelists believe that for the corporate sector, the Budget is a nonissue. The panel also felt that the government’s initiative of demonetisation will fetch result in the long run, but how long it will take the desired results in the back drop of the negative impact it has made in small/medium, unorganized segments and agricultural segment, almost writing an obituary on them is uncertain.