“The Budget has interesting schemes towards agriculture and rural development”
The budget has introduced some interesting schemes towards agriculture and rural development. They continue to support investments in infrastructure, which will support our portable compressor range. Many of our suppliers will benefit from the MSME tax reduction and perhaps the tax reduction will encourage capital expenditure, which could in turn support our industrial compressor range. Overall, while there are no explicit manufacturing boosters, we hope that the momentum from the last quarter will sustain through 2018.
“No steps to boost exports”
Overall budget is very rural focussed and has many schemes to support farmers and rural healthcare. It will not have much impact on urban population for them it is status quo.Increasing the eligibility for 25 % corporate tax from Rs 50 Crs to 250 Crs is a good move for MSME industries in that bracket. There are no special steps to grow the exports. How 15 % growth in exports will be achieved is not clear.
Creating employment should have been one of the thrust factors, but except big outlay in infrastructure projects which will lead to large employment creation, no other measures are taken to make up the employment deficit from other sectors.
“The demand for welding products will go up”
The Budget is focused on agricultural & rural development, with special emphasis on health, education and employment, while boosting growth prospects for MSMEs. Infrastructure development is the common thread in all these focus areas. For a while now, industry has been struggling with lower capacity utilization. Boosting Rural demand appears to be a step in the right direction.Rural Economy
The following measures are expected to boost rural incomes and thereby enhance rural spending:
“The Machine Tools Industry did not gain anything special”
The Budget was more focused on Agriculture and Infrastructure. However, the ripple effect of these sectors do help Machine Tools. The manufacture of tractors & implements would go up. The rural population’s disposable income would go up resulting in sales of more vehicles, household appliances and consumer goods. All of these sectors do need more Machine Tools to meet added demand. The growth expected on Defense and Aerospace sector was not so impressive. Those sectors should have been given more weightage in the Budget,as they drive up demands of all industrial sectors and has high potential for job creation. The ‘Make in India’ would become a reality when large number of youth,
