Months ahead of the elections when the BJP made public its manifesto one of the key underlining factors were that the government of BJP were to ensure fiscal discipline. With nearly nine days remaining for the union budget to be tabled and passed taxation expert, Ved Jain says that this budget will be a teaser to what the fiscal policy of this government will be for times to come. An NNIS EXCLUSIVE.
BUDGET WILL SHOW DIRECTION OF FISCAL POLICY VED JAIN TO NNIS
The biggest challenge for Narendra Modi at this stage is to prove in the budget that he and his government can contain the country’s fiscal deficit. Experts opine that key decisions on Current account deficit, relations with RBI and how much funds to sink to state lenders and promotion of private investments will be kept in mind.  For the Narendra Modi government the goal is to achieve a fiscal deficit target of 4.6 per cent of gross domestic product.  A fiscally prudent budget is also critical given Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services has a negative outlook on its “BBB-minus” rating for India. This will decide whether a downgrade to junk can be averted. Ved Jain says 40 days is too short  a period and what one can expect is that this budget will show direction of the fiscal policy for the future.Â
Ved Jain feels that corporate tax needs restructuring. He adds that bottlenecks due to surcharge  and education shares and others need to be eased out. On an individual level he is firmly of the view that with inflation a issue the tax exemption limit needs to be upped.
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In terms of policy, Ved Jain is looking at the removal of the retrospective amendment
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