MCCI symposium

A day after Union Finance minster Nirmala Sitharaman tabled the Union budget at the parliament, Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) organised a symposium on the Union Budget 2019-20 on Saturday. It was addressed by tax consultant and senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India NK Poddar, professor of economics Professor at Indian Institute of Management , Kolkata Partha Ray, leading financial analyst Amitav Kothari, associate professor of economics, University of Calcutta  Prof. Kumarjit Mandal, and chairman MCCI standing committee on Indirect Taxes and GST, MCCI, Arun Kumar Agarwal.

Explaining the various provisions of direct taxes in the budget Poddar said that the TDS of two per cent to be deducted for cash withdrawal of Rs 1 crore and above is confusing as TDS can be deducted only on income while withdrawing cash cannot be treated as income.

meeting (1)

Prof Ray during his address commented that the budget, though could lay down a few pro-growth measures, cannot be termed as a ‘big bang’ one as it lacked vision. “Though Rs 70,000 crore has been allocated for public sector banks’ rejuvenation, the banking sector is still reeling under the pressures of NPAs and the NBFCs are still grappling with crisis,” he said, adding that credit flow in the economy was a concern which might pose a threat to growth. “Given the current macroeconomic situation, unclogging of credit remains the biggest challenge to India’s dream of becoming a $ 5 trillion economy,” Prof Ray said. He said fiscal discipline had to be maintained if we have to progress further, and said fiscal deficit target of 3.33.4 per cent of GDP must be met through prudent measures.

Commenting that IMF had predicted if India could manage to have a 7.7 per cent GDP growth rate, it could emerge as a $ 4.7 trillion economy, Prof Ray added that though India was expected to take concrete strides towards becoming a big economy in the future, the gap between India and China will widen further. As per his analysis, even if China’s GDP growth came down from the 9-10 per cent rate level to around 5.5 per cent, it would become a $ 21 Trillion economy by 2024-25. 

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