truely tamil end

The first impression that I got after hearing this budget is "Terrible" to say that least. The budget 2008-09 is totally regressive and politically motivated. Power Hunger is what has ruled the minds of our extinguished FM and the team when they sat to prepare it. The kind of cheap tactics that were at play this time round were least expected from the government headed by the person who initiated the reforms process.

- The Rs 60000 cr waiver given to farmers is going to set a very bad precedence for the future generations, when he himself knows very well that these funds can very well be utilized for the benefit of the very same cult in a much more productive way. This particular step encourages evasion and reveals the pathetic intents of the power hungry politicians.
-While announcing the waiver, he never committed to taking the burden on exchequer and he was stressing on providing liquidity to the extent of write offs, which compels me to presume that all's not well. Where there is euphoria in banking circles about the probable clean up of balance sheets without any cost, that will all get wiped out once we get the fineprint.
-The increase in STCG tax is understandable but the annulling of STT as a rebate would hurt many an arbitraguer and jobbers, there by substantially reducing the depth of the markets. I will not be surprised if the we see the volumes dipping further from the current abysmal levels, which will not only hurt the markets but also the exchequer.
-The Excise duty cut on small cars was not at all necessary while on two wheelers it is.
-Why was the dilution in the FBT regime necessary, just when it is smoothly getting to sink into the system after initial hiccups and when the corporates affected are just about started to live with it.

There were lots of things, which I think could have been done differently for the desired effect but our esteemed FM thought otherwise at the cost of economic imbalance. He poured windfalls for the farmers, the middle and upper middle class, which he refers to as 'aam aadmi', but I feel the lower middle class was totally ignored. It just makes me fell jittery when I think of the government not meeting the planned revenue expectations. It will surely have a cascading effect and we surely will see the buoyancy that we are boasting of, evaporating as fast. While populist measures to some extent are understandable given the kind of mandate this government got but this kind of behavior is totally uncalled for and is unbecoming from a person of his stature.

Mr FM, I must say u got it all wrong this time.

your's
Sunil K Daga.
gust editor:- Enrich investments