The Confederation of Indian Industry, Telangana and the Federation of Telangana Chambers of Commerce and Industry have welcomed the Union Budget, for its overarching objective of laying foundation of the country for the future, but differed on what the proposals meant for Telangana.
“This budget is a blueprint for India @100 and has taken first step towards achieving the vision,” FTCCI president K.Bhasker Reddy said in a media interaction.
Hailing the proposals, including focus on infrastructure development through PM Gati Shakti, extension of ECLGS for MSMEs with an additional ₹50,000 crore and emphasis on assisting the hospitality sector that weighed under the pandemic will help the enterprises. Introduction of PLI scheme for the solar sector will strengthen domestic manufacturing of solar modules and “we expect the government to extend the scheme to all other sectors. Creation of unified logistics platform and developments of 100 new cargo terminals in the next three years are significant steps in improving the supply chain eco system in the country,” he said.
Nothing for TS
Mr.Reddy said the budget, however, “has not offered anything for Telangana, which is very disappointing”, Though it has created a positive atmosphere for startups, there are no changes for the market, investors and traders, so the budget is a non-event for stock market. There is nothing to cheer about for common people as no sops are given to any section of people.
Separately, CII Telangana chairman Sameer Goel said many of the Budget proposals are for domains in which Telangana is strong such as defence, startups, MSMEs and logistics, hence the State is bound to benefit from them.
Convenor of Defence and Aerospace panel of CII-TS Subba Rao Pavuluri said Telangana’s defence ecosystem will gain from the proposal setting aside 68% of capital outlay of defence budget for domestic industries.
Allocation of 25% of defence R&D budget for startups, academia and private industry is a much-needed reform.
The pharma industry, in which Hyderabad is a leader, however, was disappointed with CII-TS EODB panel convenor and EVP of Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories M.V.Narasimhan saying the industry was looking forward to incentives for R&D work.
Chairman of EEPC India, a body of country’s engineering exporters, Mahesh K. Desai said the budget proposal permitting MSMEs to provide surety bonds as a substitute for bank guarantees for government procurements will reduce impact on working capital. The budget, however, is disappointing as there is no direct mention of exports, he said.
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories chairman Satish Reddy termed the Budget as growth-oriented and from a pharma perspective, acknowledgement of the need for a multi-stakeholder innovation ecosystem and funding in sunrise sectors such as pharma are welcome.
