Experts say 2016 budget could help entrepreneurs and tech sector

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has at last presented the Union Budget 2016 and while the budget holds promise, we decided it’s better if the experts weigh in with their views on whether they think Jaitley delivered or not-

On Budget 2016:

“Arun Jaitley has kind of looked at everything- from the irrigation spend to the bank’s balance sheets which have been stressed for some time now. That’s not all. He has also gone beyond that to encourage entrepreneurship across all the board and also of specific categories like the SC/STs. He has also talked about skill upgradation and creating clusters for them.”

-Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman, Hero Corporate Service Limited

On how Digital India policies feature in the Budget:

“The good part about the policies for Digital India is all weaved into the overall plan. It is not standing out separately and it shouldn’t. It should be an absolute integral part of the growth plan which it has become. I love the fact that the government is committed to scale digital literacy mission to 6 crore rural households. And, you know the way technology is being used to reach out to the rural sector- that’s a right thing to do.”

-Debjani Ghosh, Managing Director-Sales and Marketing, South Asia, Intel Techno logy India Private Limited

On taxes

“The only area in which some people may object to is the fact that in the top end, he’s raised some of the taxes. I would imagine that if he wanted to stick to the number crunch, he’s also stuck to the fiscal deficit target that was announced, which frankly was a bit of a surprise for me. I’d expected there’d be some slippage- so I guess that’s where they raised the additional slippage from.”

-Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman, Hero Corporate Service Limited

On ease of doing business:

“It is too early to comment whether the budget will help in ease of doing business or not. We will have to go through the details to figure that out. But I think the intent was there in lot of the initiatives mentioned for example- tech enabled procurement, tech-enabled governance and some good initiatives have come out. The focus however has to be how these can be executed and how quickly.”

-Debjani Ghosh, Managing Director-Sales and Marketing, South Asia, Intel Techno logy India Private Limited

On how the auto market will be affected:

Even though the top-end luxury cars are a small part of the auto market, any increase in cost in today’s market when the economy is slow will affect the market.

-Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman, Hero Corporate Service Limited

(Image credits: Indiatimes)