By Mrs. Sushma Paul Berlia
For the Economy and Business: The budget has set a long-term fiscal direction and vision. It is a growth-oriented budget to provide economic stimulus and employment by giving impetus on public investment in public infrastructure meant for the long-term growth of the economy.
The budget has been able to pinpoint major pain areas – be it education, transport and logistics, infrastructure and even mental health thereby touching most of the points that are engaging the minds of the people and the economy.
It is also very welcome that for new manufacturing units, the government has extended by one year the concession of the lower tax regime. The reduction of corporate surcharge from 12 % to 7% is also welcome as is the capping of surcharge on all equities and not just quoted shares.
For the Education Sector: here has been a great emphasis in this budget on digitalization and virtual education as a tool towards filling the gap that took place due to the pandemic in the last 2 years in Schools and Higher Education, while at the same time it is giving access at different levels and a resilient education process to ensure minimum quality education is available to all – whether through skilling portals, skilling courses through ITIs, Education TV channels in Schools, E-Vidya scheme, high quality digital content and digital university.
One may add that all these are initial reactions to the budget as the devil is sometimes in the details.
(Mrs. Sushma Paul Berlia is Chairperson of National Council on Ease of Doing Business, ASSOCHAM)
