Reactions to Union Budget 2020-21

"Budget focusses on providing impetus to domestic industry by rationalizing Customs duty exemptions, and levying duties on import of goods for specific industries which are focused on ‘Make in India’ including increase on customs duties on electric vehicles. Government has taken steps to ensure measures to curb abuse of benefits available under the preferential / free trade agreements harming the domestic players. Keeping this theme in mind safeguard duty and anti-dumping duty has also been imposed on specific sectors.

Health cess of 5% in the nature of customs duty has been levied on import of specified medical devices with immediate effect.

From a GST perspective, given that GST Council along with the government has been taking steps to improvise implementation and administration of GST on an ongoing basis, no surprises or key amendments have been made to the GST legislation. Amendments for extending composition scheme to services sector and in the transition provisions for enabling the government to prescribe time limit for claiming unclaimed credits under the erstwhile regime is a positive step by the government."

-Mr. Manish Mishra, Partner, J. Sagar Associates

"Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Union Budget presentation, focused more on the infrastructure development by allocating INR 1.7 lakh crore. The government has taken many measures which will help fulfil the aspirations and vision of most of the sectors but the real estate sector has not been discussed much during the Budget. Measures on the repo rate deduction, GST rate reduction on construction materials etc. were not mentioned. Deduction on housing loans in affordable housing segment  has extended by one year. The provision of tax holiday for the developers of affordable housing sector will further boost the segment. Also the concession provided to the real estate transactions will bring in more investment to the sector. The government did not announce schemes or policies to fulfil the promise of ‘’Housing for all by 2022”, within two years. Real Estate being one of the key contributors to the country’s economy, it is important to address the problems faced by the sector."

-Mr. Kishore Jain, President, CREDAI Bengaluru