Industry Budget Reactions: Positive Signs of Growth Path

The budget speech of Mr Arun Jaitley have created a strong impact on stock market, but some segments of industrialists have expressed their concerns on the latest budget.

With reference to the announcement of Budget 2018, Mr. Nikhil Arora Vice-President & Managing Director, GoDaddy India shared his perspective on the MSMEs and small business sector by adding, “The budget this year focused towards “Ease of Living” & “Ease of doing Business” to strengthen agriculture, health, education, employment, MSME and infrastructure sectors”. It is good to know that our economy is on course to achieve over 8% growth. Government is recognizing the multi-faceted role played by the MSME sector towards encouraging the generation of self-employment with these tax relief and subsidies on custom duty.  This year’s budget also saw a huge allocation of funds to the MSME sector to help them get started and continue to grow, this allocation comes as a big relief for the sector badly in need for such encouragement. More support for MSME for NPAs and troubled enterprises and funding will indeed benefit the MSME sector at large and contribute to the Indian economy in the long run. Overall, the budget focusses on making positive structural reforms to drive India’s growth story further.”

Highlighting another point from Smart Cities’ perspective, Mr. Amit Singh, Co-Founder and Smart City Expert, Yitsol Technologies said, "Smart City is “THE SOLUTION” to deal with massive population growth, rural to urban migration, and depleting city resources. I welcome the budget allocation for smart cities, and this should become the catalyst to transform our cities. However this focus for smart cities should not be just for once, but continuous. With increased government focus, we should look forward for more advanced technological innovations in the area of smart city implementation. Usage of Artificial AI to control urban management systems, including traffic lights and emergency dispatch of all services. Real-time data analysis of the traffic would enable the city authorities to plan better city traffic management.

Moreover, acknowledging the Mr. Jaitley’s emphasis on healthcare, Mr. Srinivasan H.R, Managing Director and Vice-chairman of TAKE Solutions admired the Union Budget 2018 and said, “The Union Budget 2018 has taken a huge step in making healthcare affordable and accessible by launching the world's largest government-funded healthcare programme. The initiative to cover 100 million families with INR 5 lakh per family annual insurance cover is a welcome change. More exposure of the healthcare industry value adds to the Life Sciences sector which will boost the growth of the sector. The government’s proposed R&D investments in futuristic technologies - artificial intelligence, robotics, big data are sure to be a game changer to our industry.”

Bringing a digital India aspect of this year’s budget, Surendra Singh, Country Director, Forcepoint  stated, “The government has come out with a truly ‘Bharat’ budget and has introduced several inclusive digital programmes for rural India to reap benefits of information technology. From doubling the outlay for promoting digital economy for the next year and  plans to speed-up digitisation with initiatives such as implementing five lakh WI-FI hotspots to provide the internet to rural citizens, connecting one lakh gram panchayats via internet cables, announcing a national program to direct efforts in Artificial Intelligence and increased digital intensity in the education sector are welcome steps. However, as more technology use grows amongst people so would be the need to become aware of cyber threats. Cyber security will now be more important than ever for securing digital assets as more and more people connect and conduct business using technology. There is a requirement of holistic strategy that provides cybersecurity frameworks for both public and private sectors with the government educating and ensuring compliance. The strategy should be all encompassing including small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as they don’t have expertise to deal with emerging cyber security attacks. A lot more focus needs to be put on educating the public and it is not just the government but also a corporate responsibility.”