The Union Budget 2023 was tabled on February 01, 2023 and the industry believes that it is a populist budget. Finance Minister has checked all the boxes while designing the Budget and has addressed every sector equally.
Finance experts believe that this year’s budget emphasise both on business and individual growth. The budget is progressive on all fronts and has focussed on inclusive development.
Here’s what Finance Experts have to say about Budget 2023:
Ranen Banerjee, Partner and Leader, Economic Advisory Services, PwC India
The Union Budget ticks all the expected boxes viz. pump priming the economy with 33% higher CapEx allocation; pushing consumption by encouraging taxpayers to adopt the new tax regime with lower taxes and consume the additional money in hand rather than using savings to lower the tax burden in the old regime; and sticking to the fiscal consolidation path with the fiscal deficit target being brought down to 5.9%. The highest tax rate on personal income has also been brought down to address concerns on flight of HNIs.
Motilal Oswal, MD & CEO, Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited
The budget remains focused on long-term economic growth through capex and sops to boost consumption for the middle-income group. This would support strong corporate earnings with positive bias for sectors like infra, housing, cement, cap goods, auto, and tourism. Despite upcoming state elections, the government did not deliver a populist budget and tried to maintain fiscal prudence.
Monish Shah, Partner, Deloitte India
The finance budget 2023 was announced on the back of seven key pillars including inclusive development and last mile reach. These pillars are set to support the development of the financial sector through ease of business, reduced cost of compliance, efficient flow of credit, enhanced digital public infrastructure, and eventually foster financial stability and responsible financing.
The budget focuses on providing fiscal support to further the digital public infrastructure, build AI Centres of Excellence and boost acceptance of digital payments. Extension of Digi-locker to financial services as well as a risk-based KYC system is expected to accelerate data protection and promote the last-mile flow of credit and eventually help build a digi-economic profile of the user.
Mehul Pandya, MD and CEO, CareEdge
This is an exceptionally good Union Budget as it puts the growth in clear perspective along with a commitment to fiscal discipline. The government’s commitment to growth emanates from the significant capex outlay – a 33% hike resulting in the highest ever outlay of Rs 10 lakh crore, translating to a whopping 3.3.% of GDP is bound to kindle the animal spirits in the private sector also to go for capex related investment.
Continued support for MSMEs is also a welcome step. Further, the digitalisation that the Economic Survey talked about is emphasised again and it shall drive the social sectors such as healthcare, education and agriculture. The increased outlay for PMAY shall be positive for the real estate and affordable housing finance sectors.
Shilpa Mankar Ahluwalia, Partner Head, Fintech, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.
The move to make PAN a universal identifier for all digital systems at government agencies, if utilized effectively, can be a game changer for digital services. For businesses, it can achieve what Aadhaar has done for individuals. PAN as the common identifier has the potential to simplify KYC processes, streamline access to public goods (including licenses and registrations) and make it easier to do business.
With adequate safeguards around data security and privacy, data linked to PAN could potentially be analysed to determine eligibility for credit, investment, insurance and other financial products, improving, for example, credit access for SME and MSME businesses. This move will also facilitate the building of a centralized KYC database that could significantly lower KYC costs for banks and other financial institutions when onboarding smaller businesses.
