Budget 2023: Here's What Industry Experts Think

Well, a big

budget

announcement just before the 2024 general election. Massive big capital outlays, especially for infrastructure and also for the agricultural sector, but to talk to us about specific sectors, we are joined by panelists, excellent panelists, in fact, yes could go To my first guest who joined us

here

on NDTV, Mr. Ravindra Pai, who is the CEO of Century Real Estate Holdings Private Limited, well, of course, first I would like to know if t

here

is anything that you were expecting, you know. As far as the

budget

is concerned, the

2023

budget and something that hasn't really happened for the real estate sector.

Well, I mean, I don't need to reiterate the fact that real estate is one of the great sectors, the second largest employer in the world. country after agriculture, big source of inflow of app devices hoping that you know, I mean, the goal is for the sector to become a trillion dollar sector by the year 2030. So, obviously, there was a lot of expectations, some of them are, you know, me. it means rationalization in GST rates in the sense that we came down from 12 to 5 but we have not been able to claim input tax credit, you know, apart from that, we were also expecting some tax concessions for first time home buyers or maybe some increase in the tax deduction, you know, home buyers, you know a lot of these things were expectations, so considering this, most of my peers or my

industry

, you know, colleagues may be a little disappointed that there hasn't been that much.

I mention about real estate, but I mean, of course, apart from the one you know, the Prime Minister Awas Yojana, where the hotel for affordable housing has increased from Rs 48,000 crore to around Rs 79,000 crore, you know, that's a substantial 66 increase in sales, but also we don't really hear too much, but I mean for me the takeaway has been that a lot of attention has been focused on capital spending and I

think

this in some ways will have some kind of indirect effect on the real estate sector. I

think

you know, actually,

what

are the measures that could have helped the sector well.

I mean, we were expecting things like funding for the real estate sector, you know, I mean the last budget we saw, the Swami fund, which was created specifically for distressed assets, we were expecting something along those lines, if you know there was a particular fund which could have been created for real estate financing because well, I mean real estate is a very specific asset class, right? I mean, we think that a lot of banks don't tend to In some ways, understanding this, which is another long-standing demand of the

industry

, was to actually get an industry status where banks can deal with real estate or at least housing affordable as a priority, you know, priority lending, that's something we obviously didn't see. happens, but like I said, I mean there's capital, you know, describe capital spending, urban planning is something that the government, I mean, the Minister of Finance, emphasized, you know, so we hope that some of these things, you know, and also with you, you know.

With tax labs really going down, we would expect there to be more disposable income for individuals and I suppose this would really incentivize them to get into asset building and buy their first home. Let me talk to Mr. Swami, who is the Managing Partner of Idea Spring Capital. What would you like to talk about the startup ecosystem? Because we've already been talking about winter funding and then also in terms of thinking. There is a little boost in terms of infrastructure, that will be of some help for the startup ecosystem and also

what

about the capital gains that we are seeing?

Yes, so I think in this budget I should say the impact. about the state is silenced, there were some references to Coes and both in Pharma on Ai and also on 5G. I think those things will definitely help, but some of the main areas where we are looking for input in the budget were Checklist for Staying in India Tommy Style of Startups Outside India and I think they are related to some aspects of the ease of doing business and taxes, both capital gains and taxes that the VCS pay in terms of their expenses, etc. There were some expectations.

I don't think they will be addressed in the budget, of course. I think so, as these were some of the pre-budget expectations. Unfortunately, that hasn't been made clearly, but what does this mean since it hasn't been addressed? What would be the impact, I mean, we are trying to keep our startups in India. You've seen startups coming back to India normally, but still, a lot of tech startups are still signing like fools out of India and that's not good for the country uh and hopefully. will be taken into account and will begin to address that ease of doing business.

I know we talked about the digit locker and changes to kyc that would make it easier for people to have no hope that those things will start to help fund managers as well. uh but in terms of startups running on their own, I don't think there's going to be a lot of ease of doing business as we heard in today's budget and you know we'll wait and see what happens in the next month. There will be auditions and also other references in terms of r d uh Investments, you know, we didn't say much about us because we hope that the Innovation that we know will be the backbone of anything that can happen in the country, uh, but in terms of us . hoping that industries could invest in funds or that industries could invest in research and get credit for that, but there was some talk about, you know, in terms of upskilling and you know the research labs, but improving skills and climbing is like knowing employability. true, that will help startups indirectly because when you hire people, they are potentially productive from day one, so that will help the industry as a whole and startups are part of the industry, so they will benefit from those things too, but I was focusing more on those specifically that can help startups, but you know more can be done and hopefully we'll see more come out, not quite living up to expectations as far as startups are concerned, Of course, let's listen to the automotive sector here, Mr.

Traman. Toyota Executive Advisor Kirloska How does the automotive sector view this particular budget? Yes, this budget. It is a very welcome budget, I would say, given the current situation and because creating India and Atman is what the honorable Prime Minister is trying to do, given that I think huge spending on infrastructure as a multiplayer effect on various competitiveness labor competitiveness because the development of skills will be produced largely in the 36 centers of excellence across the country, then logistics competition will increase, there is a huge outlay on railway infrastructure Rs 2.4 lakh crore and Rs 10 crore will go towards infrastructure development, for what the port connectivity of Plug and Play parks, end-to-end connectivity, will create a huge paradigm shift across the country, then skill development will take on a huge dimension because We are going to create a Center of Excellence across the country. country and 5G Android 5G laboratories throughout the country and digital transformation is going to be the key player and the base of the pyramid is the base: MSMEs, so there is a push coming in terms of MSMEs. development, be it the credit guarantee to the tune of Rs 20,000 crore, I think this would really help them and reduce the cost of borrowing by one percent, so this will have a huge impact on production in India and I'm sure it will boost the Manufacturing in India is also helped by a lot of import duty cuts on lithium ion battery components, mobile components, so this is really a game changer, added to that , Rs 35,000 crore of renewable energy is being spent on energy transition and hydrogen.

The mission is also a very, very big movement, so all of these things will come out and be added to the scrapping policy. I think this will really benefit a lot because 9 lakh vehicles what was announced in the last budget. I think government vehicles will now be implemented. and ambulances in all states and centre, so this is definitely a very strong budget for manufacturing in India, so you were talking about the scrapping policy, right? It is also a way to know that it has been a boring period in terms of Due to the pandemic, all this is correct, what the government has done at the moment, the budget will really add to Philip and a boost and help the sector to absolutely revive in real life schemes was a big boost to manufacturing I think.

We had tremendous success in pli schemes across sectors. I think, in fact, this should really aggravate manufacturing growth. Today we are talking about the latest economic survey in 17 of gross GDP. Manufacturing has grown. I think we are looking at 25. percent to 30 percent in the next decade when we compare ourselves to China or major Western countries, so I am sure that manufacturing GDP will double in the next decade very easily through these activities. Talking about a big push has also been especially because the agricultural sector joining us here at NDTV is Mr CM portal, the CEO of krishi kalpa.

The agricultural sector, then, what is it like? I think this is a sector in addition to manufacturing that has received a huge outlay very true. I think I'm quite satisfied, I would say that from my general budget it is positive what agriculture has to share, particularly in the announcement of the accelerator fund, which does not heard before, what I have not heard is what a condom is, but I am sure we will know in the next few days, but at least it is really a great investment opportunity for many young people, so the valuation of startups changes in the agricultural sector and we can contribute to export and secondary processing centers. and then the millets,

2023

is going to be that particular, so, as a continent, it is a great blessing.

I would say also, especially in Karnataka where enhanced funding for the 5000 Fighters has been announced for a dry region area, which is a good place. from that sector, of course, we know it's an election year, it should be a possibility as well and I also see a good place in the sense that a lot of exotic startups are seeing the momentum there, so technology is taking over the downstream with the small ones. things are going to be much more difficult. I would say yes, in fact, that's something I've heard from a lot of VCs and you know, industry analysts that they were talking about, although this is a funding winter and it's a very difficult period.

Right now, especially for the startup ecosystem, a positive impact has been especially for the agreements thought out absolutely because the reason why technology alone cannot be diverse at the same time because we need to empathize with the agricultural community and This government fund is what it has been. fact will be a great boost for new egretic companies and also for young people who want to start something. These are processing centers, so I see that as a great blessing. What I would like to see is that we have about 20,000 more FPS. so I don't know if they are also considering FPS acceleration, so if they do consider it, it would be a great addition, it's not a Clarity at all, we don't have a Clarity on that, but what I would insist on is probably the change.

Policymakers would say that they also have to consider the FPS acceleration program because they have many FPS in the country, but there are hardly very few or few in the country or doing quite well, I think if emphasis has been placed on The acceleration of fpus will actually help startups as well as the farming community. They don't have a role to play as a kind of catalytic role that can really connect the technological state with that of the farmers. So I see that overall, I think it's a pretty good budget solution, I would say from the perspective of the angry sector, it's true because in the next 12 months, as we heard, it's going to be a very difficult time because of the economic turmoil, for course, we will see that the agreed new companies will recover during This particular time, yes, now we are going to the health sector, in fact, which really benefits the health sector, which joins us.

Mr. Rahul, CFO, GE Healthcare, what are your takeaways? It has been a balanced budget. I would say the healthcare industry will see this. a benefit of many of the R&D and high-tech measures that we saw especially in the announcement of the pharmaceutical side of the 5G Labs AI Center of Excellence, all of thiswill have a cascading impact on the healthcare side, uh, nursing, uh, you. you know, training institutes, 157 of them, you know, they provide the first line of defense, we really need to solidly, um, that said, you know, one would have expected that the growth trajectory in healthcare spending that we saw during the undercover years will continue because it has become a greater focus. like that came to an abrupt uh and right, right, so I think that said a lot of the pillars of this budget are focused on areas that have a direct healthcare agenda, so if you think about the saptarishi, for For example, they have, you know, Last Mile. infrastructure and investment Youth empowerment and training, you know, inclusion, access, so all of these have direct healthcare agendas attached to them and one can expect that as this crystallizes and actually begins the delivery and execution that the health sector begin to see.

A benefit of that is also the benefit of capital spending and infrastructure spending. How much of that is actually allocated to healthcare? The increase in capex cycle is because hospitals and last mile delivery require a lot of capex. So how do we encourage and incentivize our attention? Suppliers will actually increase capital spending will be critical. Okay, because since there hasn't been a lot of attention, especially to the healthcare sector, what were the challenges that will be there until next year? So I think it's really going to incentivize that capital spending as I mentioned, you know, I think you're on the side of the caregivers, the hospitals and the care providers, how they're reaching their capabilities, how they're expanding the beds available to patients, the second would be on the manufacturing side, you know, I want to.

To know, will it be a burden for the health sector to manage it alone? I think private investment, you know, given the high interest rate cycle, is going to be a little bit stifling. Let's see how much of that infrastructure spending falls on the government. The side translates into spending on public health care. I think also in manufacturing. You know, given the strong start of the pli on both the pharma side and the medical device side. You could have seen a bit of a deepening of that pli scheme to a deeper level. local content, greater manufacturing production, all of this would have helped the sector become much more competitive both nationally and for exports.

Well, now there are many important opinions from various sectors. I would especially like to move on to the education sector, one of Ideally, the most important GDP for the country should be with regard to the NEP policy. Did it live up to what educators know or, in fact, the education sector, for example, what they expected, so the education sector is the same as us? I understand that it serves to, you know, set their goals for the youth of India. India's youngest country in the world. We don't have, you know, 50 of our population under the age of 25, so since that's the importance, maybe what was lost was the budget allocation for Education our marker is supposed to be six percent and we still have to see that meeting.

Having said that, we see that there is an upward trend for 2014 that we were looking for at 2.8 and we are seeing it today. in 3.1, so our hope is that that trend continues well, so what are the policy changes that you are considering? Because with this 2023 budget, perhaps the most interesting facet that the Honorable FM presented was the idea of ​​the district. uh Institute of education and teaching uh Education and Training uh that seeks to train our educators uh 38,000 uh teachers trained in Eclavia model schools uh which again was perhaps the first time that it was mentioned uh in the union budget along with the notion of the reading culture that was also mentioned, the digital library is something that we hope to include, you know, concepts of capacity building among teachers, yes, this is what we hope, oh, whatever challenges you say. would talk to us in terms of what he wasn't really focused on and what he would face over the next year or so until the elections come, so I think in the Indian higher education system there needs to be a rich research ecosystem so we need to be in the knowledge frontiers of knowledge creation, and if that is going to be an important goal that we need to meet, then we need to make sure that our budget allocations reflect that well.

Thank you, that was Ms Kieran Pie, the pro-Chancellor of the vidyasha education group, in fact, we are getting mixed opinions, but nevertheless, the massive boost that we continue to see has been especially in the infrastructure sector and also in the agricultural NDTV