An overview of this year’s Atmanirbhar budget’s missed opportunities
The ‘Make in India’ budget fails to give key industries noteworthy provisions that would enable them to further support the economy on its path to revival. The government set forward its roadmap for the next 25 years yet ignored several critical sections of the economy that gave timely support to the government during the pandemic, according to reports. Case in point, India is among the major global manufacturing hubs of medical devices and has been left in the lurch based on reports; this industry has also been behind the success of the mass vaccination drive that consisted of record syringes being manufactured and dispensed in record time.
Medical Device Industry
It’s impossible to miss acknowledging the role of the medical device industry in the success of the mass vaccination drive. However, this year’s budget misses an opportunity to add measures to boost domestic manufacturing.
Apart from the various schemes, this year Rs. 83,000 crore has been allocated to the health department, nearly 16.5% increase to the previous budget’s Rs. 71,269 crore. Boosting medical education, mental health and building a robust digital health ecosystem are the new programs that are vastly different from last year’s budget.
Amongst the slew of reforms introduced for the healthcare and life sciences sector, one of the biggest complaints about the medical device industry is that there was no relief in the imposition of GST. Still considered as luxury goods, the industry expected a possible reduction in import dependence that remains at around 80-85%.
Agriculture
As the farmer’s plight continues, they saw no relief in budgetary allocations, as agriculture was left with a meager 2%. Not surprising, there is a notable reduction in the sector’s share, asper reports in this year’s budget to around 3.84% from 4.2% in the previous year’s budget. Another critical miss has been no reduction in the fertilizer subsidies and lack of alternatives to the procurement of produce other than rice and paddy, as per reports.
Education Sector
Despite the increased digital push in the education sector with the digital university and various programs for upskilling and reskilling labour forces, the budget has missed a few relevant opportunities that may be vital for the sector. Increased digitization schemes and initiatives to enable safer physical education were largely missed in this year’s budget.
With increased adoption of digital education and the rush to upskill via international and domestic courses, the budget failed to reduce the interest on education loans, which can be a vital aspect of upskilling and reskilling.
Common Man
Job losses during the pandemic devastated the informal sector, which in turn, reduced rural and urban consumption to a significant degree. Uplifting the informal sector with provisions would have helped in increasing employment. Several reports have clearly stated one of the biggest misses in the budget has been not including sufficient measures for the middle-class population. Aligning the corporate taxation structure with personal taxation would have been a welcome move. The driving force of the economy has always been the middle-class, and yet the personal tax structure in the budget has not provided sufficient provisions for disposable income. Also, one cannot ignore missing the hike in deductions for the Section 80C limits.
Stock Market
Increased investor participation in capital markets needs to be tapped, yet has been ignored. As the middle-class population grows, the budget needed to provide certain incentives for investment alternatives to channelise savings for the common man. Consequently, with the impressive tax collections of the past year, according to reports, the capital market taxation regime could have been more favourable.
[author title=”” image=”http://”]- By Anupama Sughosh[/author]
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