Symposium on Union Budget 2019-20 hails all round growth prospect

Kolkata, July.08 (HS): Eminent Tax Consultant and Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court N K Poddar today underscored the need for further fiscal discipline to contain the country’s fiscal deficit to 3.3 per cent and turn India’s dream of becoming a 5 trillion USD  economy within the next five years, a reality.

Speaking at a national Symposium on the Union Budget for 2019-20, organised by the city’s premier Merchants Chamber of Commerce and Industry(MCCI) here today, Poddar however,expressed his strong reservations about the Union Finance minister Nirmala Sitaraman’s proposal for the deduction of  2 per cent TDS for cash withdrawal of Rs.one crore.

‘To me it sounded a little confusing as TDS can be deducted only on income while withdrawing cash cannot be treated as income’, he said. .

Also speaking on the occasion Partha Ray, Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM-C) commented that though the Budget had laid down a number of pro-growth measures and promised to generate largescale employment and speedy growth of Industry, still it could not become a “big bang” budget like the previous one  because of the absence of any specific time frame for achieving the goals, coupled with some long term vision.

But welcoming the Finance minister’s decision to pump in Rs.70,000 crores as fresh Capital infusion in Public Sector Banks’ for their ‘rejuvenation’, he said it was expected to go a long way towards bringing out the Banking sector from  the pressures of liquid crunch and  those of NPAs.

Though the  NBFCs were still grappling with crisis the attempts to maintain the credit flow in the economy was a  step in the right direction for all round growth of economy, he said.

‘Given the current macroeconomic situation,unclogging of credit remains the biggest challenge to India’s dream of becoming a 5 trillion USD economy’,Ray pointed out and said a stricter fiscal discipline had to be maintained to ensure further progress.

The target of maintaining fiscal deficit around 3.3 to-3.4 per cent of GDP must also be met through prudent measures, he observed.

Earlier commenting on IMF prediction that if India could manage to have a 7.7 per cent growth of GDP, it could well become the 5th largest economy of the world by 2024 with the total national economy hovering around the massive figure of 5 trillion USD,MCCI President and noted industrialist Visahal Jhajharia said though India was expected to take concrete strides towards achieving that goal in future, the gap between India and China will widen further.

Accordingly, he said, even if China’s GDP growth comes down from the 9 to-10 per cent  to around 5.5 per cent  it would become a  21 Trillion USD economy by 2024-’25,he said quoting from a recent study.

Several other speakers including Amitav Kothari, a leading Financial Analyst and Past President MCCI,Kumarjit Mandal, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Calcutta  and Arun Kumar Agarwal, Chairman MCCI Standing Committee on Indirect Taxes and GST, also addressed the symposium.