Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi, Feb 16: Acting Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s Interim Budget 2009-10 received a thumbs down, both from the Opposition parties as well as the Industry.
While the opposition parties dubbed it as an election budget offering "poll lollipops", India Inc termed it a non-event.
The Opposition even went to the extent of terming the government's calculations on fiscal deficit as "Satyam's balance sheet".
‘Election Speech’
Describing the budget a "poll lollipop" senior CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta accused Pranab Mukherjee of "making his first election speech" in Parliament.
"Our Finance Minister has in fact made the first election speech in Parliament without announcing the names of the candidates and spelling out the dates. After seeing Lalu Prasad's lollipop, we have today seen Pranabji's lollipop. The budget is simply a poll lollipop," Dasgupta said.
It's an election budget without any realistic fundamentals of economy," Dasgupta said, accusing the government of not recognising basic human problems of the country.
BJP leader Arun Jaitley said, "Government calculations on fiscal deficit is wide off the mark… It is like Satyam's balance sheet."
Accusing the government of "living in denial mood" and "indulging in self congratulation", the BJP leader said it is a poll budget.
CPI-M leader Basudeb Acharya said the budget did not address the key issues facing the country.
"There is nothing in the Interim Budget to address the major problems being faced by the nation, including job cuts and other implications of the economic meltdown."
He added that what acting Finance Minister Mukherjee had presented was a "repetition of President Pratibha Patil's opening address to the Budget Session" of Parliament.
Expressing his party's disappointment, BJP spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Interim Budget aimed to confuse the people of the country.
"It is a temporary budget by a temporary Central government and a temporary Finance Minister. Instead of giving any relief to the common man, the budget aims to confuse people," Naqvi said.
The budget "does not reflect any economic stability and has been prepared keeping in view the upcoming Lok Sabha elections", he added.
Convenor of the BJP-led National Democratic Aliance (NDA), Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal-United, said the government had claimed that "it had done lots of things for youth, farmers and aam aadmi (common man). Actually, it has not done anything at all for these sections".
He described it as a "desperate budget".
Samajwadi Party MP Ramji Lal Suman welcomed the budget but said the government should have given more attention of agriculture. "Farmers should be given more power and water at cheap rates," he said.
‘Non-event’
While calling the Interim Budget a non-event, India Inc said that the exercise was more of a political statement.
"It was completely (a) non-event. It was (more a) political statement than (an) Interim Budget. There was nothing for any sector, forget about real estate," Parsvnath Developers Chairman Pradeep Jain said.
Expressing similar sentiments, Kotak Mahindra Bank Managing Director Uday Kotak said, "Acting Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has stuck to what is good convention."
TCS ED and CFO S Mahalingam said there were two stimulus packages given in the past couple of months and they were going to stay as they were. "I am disappointed," he added.
Stating that the government did not have much of a choice, Hinduja Group CFO Prabal Banerjee said: "They did what they could best do."
NASSCOM, while lauding the government’s continued focus on infrastructure and education, did urge the establishment to expedite spending of the allocated funds particularly for IT projects, to stimulate the domestic market and drive economic activity.
"In the interim there is need for urgently removing the inequities and multiplicities of taxes and procedural issues even before the new government comes in," the body added.
The PHD Chamber described the Interim Budget as a major disappointment for industry which was expecting a slew of measures from the government to rejuvenate the economy to overcome the demand slump accruing from the global meltdown currently underway.
“Trade and industry was looking forward to a bold stimulus package which not only takes a proactive stance to keep the growth momentum going but also sends out a strong message that the Indian economy has the resilience to tackle the difficulties arising out of global turmoil”, said Satish Bagrodia, president, PHD Chamber.
(With IANS/PTI inputs)
First Published: Monday, February 16, 2009, 00:00