Saturday, Mar 01, 2003
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Tamil Nadu
By Our Special Correspondent
Addressing a press conference here, they however, expressed the view that the budget, as reflected by the Finance Minister's speech, did not seem to have done enough for the agriculture sector, which accounted for the largest segment of employment, and also failed to include Chennai airport and port in the proposed modernisation schemes. T. Kannan, chairman, CII-SR, said that as far as industry was concerned, the budget, by and large, fulfilled "sectoral expectations" including textiles. Tax reliefs related to long-term capital gains and dividends would revive the capital market. The budget also continued the policy of low interest rates. Procedural simplifications, including self-declaration by importers-exporters, were quite welcome. P. K. Mohapatra, chairman, Tamil Nadu Committee of the CII-SR, said the Government proposal to fill the viability gap of infrastructure projects and enable their financial closure was one of the most significant aspects of the budget and would have a long-term and positive impact. Venu Srinivasan, chairman and managing director, TVS Motor Company Ltd, said the reduction of excise duty on cars and tyres, and outlays on road projects would benefit the automobile industry. The reliefs given to the car industry were only a "correction" of the past distortion, whereby it was taxed quite high as if car represented a luxury in the present times, while commercial vehicles already enjoyed the standard excise rate of 16 per cent. Speaking on behalf of the textile industry, Manickam Ramaswamy welcomed restructuring of the excise duties for the sector and removal of exemptions enabling completion of the Cenvat chain to eliminate tax evasion. Powerlooms and processing, the "weakest links" in the industry, would benefit from the budget announcements. T.T. Ashok, representing the small scale industry sector, noting the Minister's intention to persuade all banks to keep their interest rate for SSIs within a band of two per cent around the prime lending rate, said what counted was the delivery mechanism for credit and funds for modernisation which was woefully lacking in effectiveness. The share of bank credit to SSIs had declined to 12.5 per cent. Sunita Reddy said the concessions for hospitals and medicines would help to tap low-cost, high-skills in the medical field in India and make it the preferred destination for patients from Southeast Asia and even Britain. Manoj Virmani said abolition of the expenditure tax, restoration of leave travel concession to government staff and a boost to road projects would benefit the tourism industry. K. Vasudevan (power sector) said lower tariffs might affect indigenous manufacturers of high-voltage transmission equipment. H.R.Srinivasan said logistics cost would come down as a result of introduction of value-added tax at the State level. Representatives of the information technology sector welcomed the clarifications on tax exemptions under Sections 10A and 10-B of the Income-Tax Act and provisions which would facilitate cross-border mergers and consolidation.
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