Cruel only to be kind
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee shied away from announcing any major reforms in the Union Budget on Friday and focused more on fiscal consolidation. To control fiscal deficit, he raised excise and service tax rates to raise `45,940 crore and brought more services into the tax net while providing token relief on the personal income-tax front.
Mr Mukherjee said that like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he had to “be cruel only to be kind” in order to cut the fiscal deficit. “Economic policy, as in medical treatment, often requires us to do something which, in the short run, may be painful, but is good for us in the long run,” said Mr Mukherjee.
Though industry may have liked him to bring down subsidies rather than just raise taxes, the political situation would have tied Mr Mukherjee’s hands. But, to the credit of the finance minister, he didn’t raise allocations for various popular schemes by a huge percentage. All non-oil goods are likely to cost more on account of the higher excise duty and service tax as well as on account of including all services, except 17, in the tax net.
However, the fiscal space which the finance minister is building may help him announce a more populist Budget next year, before the elections of 2014.
Mr Mukherjee raised the personal I-T exemption limit to `2 lakh from the current `1.8 lakh, which will result in a saving of `2,000 for tax-payers. However, this is less than `3 lakh proposed by the standing committee on finance which had reviewed the DTC. He changed the tax slabs, benefiting those with annual incomes between `800,001 and `999,999. They move from the 30 per cent slab to the 20 per cent slab. However, not much money would be left in hand as people will have to pay more for services like phone and mobile bills, air travel, credit and debit card bills, DTH, insurance, dry-cleaning, hotel stays and developing of photographs. The increase in excise duty will make buying cars, ACs, refrigerators, washing machi-nes, watches and fans, among other items, costlier.
He has tried to push investment in infrastructure by allowing financial institutions and others to raise about `60,000 crore from tax-free bonds in 2012-13. He also announced a tax incentive scheme for small investors to invest in stock markets as in India retail investment in equities is very low.
Due to low tax revenues and poor disinvestment receipts, the government’s fiscal deficit for 2011-12 has moved up to 5.9 per cent of GDP, as against the target of 4.6 per cent. For 2012-13, Mr Mukherjee has pegged the fiscal deficit target at 5.1 per cent. The government will be borrowing `4.79 lakh crore in 2012-13, about `43,000 crore higher than the revised estimates of the current fiscal. He has set a target to bring subsidy expenditure under two per cent of GDP in 2012-13 from the current 3.1 per cent and 1.75 per cent over the next three years.
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