With less than 24 hours to go for the Union Budget 2020-21, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman tabled Economic Survey in parliament on Friday.
The document, authored by chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian and his team, has made a case for ''wealth creation'' in the country by promoting pro-business policies and strengthening the invisible hand of the market, Vikram Kirloskar President of CII and Vice Chairman of Toyota Kirloskar Motor, told CNBC-TV18.
Kirloskar said: "I think Krishnamurthy Subramanian is talking about free markets and that is the way to go. My belief always has been that let the government take care of the farmer, of the agricultural sector, the rural areas nicely, let them get wealthier and industry can take care of itself."
Industry should be left alone as Subramanian is suggesting and the focus should be on lower levels of the society who do not have enough money, Kirloskar added.
"We focus more on that from the governmental level. So, I am happy that it is in that direction."
Vinayak Chatterjee, Chairman and co-founder of Feedback Infra, said: "In the Economic Survey, the CEA has drawn a link from his last survey to re-emphasise an investment-led growth and he has given the licence to the finance minister by advocating a certain relaxation of the fiscal space to allow that policy to unfold."
"So, we have these two fundamentals in place. In infrastructure, our expectation that we have given the government across many interactions for the sector as a whole -- one is that do try and orient it a little towards rural India."
For example, infrastructure if it is in irrigation, water works and rural roads, these are the areas where even the infrastructure spend could be a little slanted towards rural areas to put more money and jobs where it is required, he added.
Secondly, whatever allocations are there for the infrastructure sector. Last year it was Rs 4,41,000 crore.
"Let us assume it is Rs 6 lakh crore this year, if you just put that Rs 6 lakh crore butter equally on a toast, that is what you get but if you pick Rs 2 lakh crore out of that and put it in a developmental financial institution, you can leverage that 9 times, therefore Rs 2 lakh crore fiscal space in the Budget can be leveraged to Rs 20 lakh crore DFI which the sector sorely needs."
"We need a developmental financial institution for the sector because of the withdrawal of the commercial banks and the NBFCs and also this leveraging gives a much bigger bank for the buck."
So, that is an expectation that somewhere or the other the finance minister will be able to use funds from the consolidated fund of India, Chatterjee said.
Sinha said: "Make in India as a concept has struggled to really find traction on the ground. I do not think we have had as much of an outcome of Make in India as we would have liked."
Now, assemble in India is another version of the same thing with little bit more of an outward focus, an export oriented focus, is again just a slogan, he said.
Whether the government comes with some sort of export incentives, any kind of manufacturing incentives specifically targeted for companies that are exporting, some kind of new SEZ kind of concept, we have to wait and see, at this point it is not clear, he added.
"So the question really is have FTAs been good for India or have they not been good for India? I believe in free markets and therefore I do believe in the fact that free markets lead to more efficient trading, more competitive trading and therefore we as a country can specialise on things that we are better at."
"Therefore, I do believe that it results in overall value of the whole system going up. Therefore, I am not surprised to hear that free markets or FTAs have actually worked for us. I would very much believe that on a judicious basis we must enter into more free trade agreements such that more markets are opened up for us."
