Banking Shri CH S.S.Mallikarjuna Rao, MD & CEO, Punjab National Bank We welcome the measures announced by Hon’ble Finance Minister in Union Budget 2021-22.The budget rightly strikes a reasonable balance between addressing the key pillars of Health & Well-being, Inclusive Development, Human Capital, Innovation and R&D, apart from laying the path for a robust economy by providing a major infrastructure boost.
The array of measures announced are in line with people as well as market expectations and will go a long way to bring the nation back on track by boosting spending on infrastructure and rural development while fighting the pandemic through health focused measures.
As far as the financial sector is concerned, further recapitalization of Rs 20,000 crore for PSBs in the FY 2021-22 is a welcome step.
The other measures which are expected to strengthen the sector are as under:
• Various measures have been announced on the infrastructure front, which are expected to take the economy into a new trajectory of growth.In addition to over a 34% increase in capital expenditure, new highway projects have also been announced. • Setting up of a professionally managed Development Financial Institution will catalyze infrastructure funding. • Creation of an ARC and Asset Management Company that will take over the stressed assets and sell to Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs), is also welcome as it will help improve the health of the banking sector through impact on price discovery and improving competition in the market. • The NCLT system will be strengthened and e-Courts will be adopted and alternate mechanism of debt resolution will be set up. • The massive program for monetization of completed/ running projects will help in creating required resources through the instruments like INVITs. • Other important announcements of bringing in the IPO of LIC, hiking the FDI limit in insurance increase to 74% from 49%, strategically divest 2 Public Sector Banks and 1 general insurance company, are steps in the right direction. The voluntary scrapping policy proposed for discarding old commercial vehicles will boost the automobile industry.
The gross borrowing programme is also helpful to maintain the fiscal health of the economy, while providing necessary funding towards growth and development of the infrastructure.
Agriculture Mr.
Randhir Chauhan, Managing Director, Netafim India and Senior Vice President, Netafim Ltd.on Agriculture “The Union Budget clearly highlights the Government’s continued focus to modernize the Agri sector.We welcome the announcement of additional allocation of Rs.5,000 cr to the Micro Irrigation Fund (MIF) under NABARD which now totals Rs.10,000 cr.This is in line with the Government’s vision of ‘per drop more crop’, and will help move closer to the target of micro irrigation coverage across 1 crore ha in five years, across the country.In order to improve the fund utilization, we request policymakers to remove the condition of disbursement (which is only against additional subsidy) and consider to make it available for the mandatory state share as well.The additional fund could keep the momentum up in states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka which are already in favour of the scheme, help restart in states like Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and bring newer states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, etc.under its gamut.”
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