Wishlist For Union Budget ’16

As the countdown began for the Union Budget, BW Businessworld, with NewsX, hosted a series of high-voltage pre-budget discussions featuring entrepreneurs, thinkers and influencers across sectors such as taxation, startups, infrastructure, and healthcare.

Moderated by NewsX anchor Athar Khan, the session on taxation revolved around changes that are expected to take place with the coming of GST and the difficulty in meeting the fiscal deficit target.

Healthcare being on the top of priority list, industry experts stressed the need to concentrate on primary healthcare. The roundtable attended by Dr Lal PathLabs’ Arvind Lal, Arete Advisors founding partner Monika Sood, Quadria Capital director Sunil Thakur, and BW Businessworld consulting editor Pranjal Sharma emphasised the need for providing healthcare to the masses and setting up medical schools to increase the number of doctors and specialists across India.

In the backdrop of the Startup India Initiative, much emphasis was laid on the changes in the ease of doing business and angel taxation. Experts present at the session included NASSCOM V-P Rajat Tandon, KPMG tax partner for e-commerce and Startup Amarjeet Singh, real estate portal PropTiger co-founder Dhruv Agarwala and online medical consultation platform Lybrate’s CEO & co-founder Saurabh Arora.

At a time when several infrastructure projects are stalled and power linkages are also posing to be a challenge, think thanks across infrastructure, power and real estate voiced their expectations from the upcoming Budget that can give a boost to the industry. The panel discussion was attended by Power Trading Corp’s former CMD T.N. Thakur, Anish De, partner, Infrastructure and Government Services, KPMG, Ashwinder Raj Singh, CEO, Residential Services, JLL India and BW’s Pranjal Sharma.

The roundtable on HRD and skill development focused on employment generation. Those that attended the discussion included Pritam Singh, former director, IIM Lucknow, Nishith Upadhyaya, head, Advisory & Knowledge, SHRM India, Arja Chakravarthy, programme chair of Management Course, School of Inspired Leadership, and Dilip Chenoy, former CEO NSDC and former DG of SIAM. The discussion centred on the need to reform the education system at primary and higher levels to make it skill based, among other things.

BW’s chairman and editor in chief Anurag Batra in the manufacturing roundtable said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project, Make in India, reflects that the government’s steps are in the right direction. The other panellists in the roundtable included Dilip Chenoy of NSDC, Zafar Iqbal, CEO, Goenka Electric Motor, Gaurav Mehndiratta, Partner, Tax at KPMG.

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