Views of Mr. Dinesh Thakkar (CMD - Angel Broking) on Union Budget 2015

"In my view, the FM had to tackle conflicting objectives such as higher share of government revenues going to the states as well as maintaining a tight fiscal deficit, while also increasing public investments to spur growth as private investments are still lagging behind. So, the deficit target has come in a tad higher at 3.9% vs 3.6% expected, but importantly, the additional spending is going towards medium-term growth enhancing areas such as infrastructure, education, skill development and sanitation. Secondly, this budget carries forward the government’s thrust on taking our economy towards global standards of governance by making it more investment-friendly, fairer and transparent, with its thrust on lower subsidies, better subsidy allocation through DBT and Jan Dhan Yojana, efforts to rein in black money, postponing GAAR and implementing a new bankruptcy law. In keeping with this theme, there is also increasing thrust on social security, with the increase in deductions for health insurance and pension. The surcharge of 2% on corporate tax is near-term negative for the markets, but is well-balanced with the medium term commitment to lower base corporate tax rate from 30% to 25%, simplifying the tax structure as well as sticking to the April 2016 deadline for GST."