Commenting on Union Budget 2009-10, Surendra Hiranandani, Founder & Managing Director- Hiranandani Upscalse group of companies said, “The most positive aspect of the budget has been the determination to proceed with the uniform GST and the abolition of FBT.

The issues of concerns are :-

1. High fiscal deficit is necessary in view of the global economic crisis. But traditionally in India the RBI has taken the view that if the government prints excessive money for itself the rest of the economy must pay higher interest rates. We cannot expect growth in consumer demand and increase in investment unless the interest rates are lowered.

2. There is no clue in the budget as to how the infrastructure development is going to take place. The estimated need for infrastructure is over US$ 500 billion. The road map to achieve this has not been clarified. For example in China they have installed new electricity generation capacity of over 2000 MW every week in the last 5 years, while we are having 10 hour power cuts across the country including in our capital city.

3. No goals have been laid for Urbanization of our population. Without a firm goal we will continue to falter on education, social security, economic progress and we will continue to have a frightening rate of population growth.

4. Money which is being spent on rural areas seems to be in the form of relief as during drought and earthquakes. True rise in the rural income will happen only when there are less number of people harvesting the same quantity of agriculture products. Otherwise, the only way for better income in the agrarian sector would be higher food prices.

A clear road map for infrastructure and urban development and its implementation is not clear in this budget.

The expectation of the budget was to build confidence in a time of worldwide economic crisis. The markets were looking at encouragement to industries and individuals to pull out their savings and invest, encourage their expansion and create new jobs and to encourage consumers to get out and spend. The budget perhaps out of Political Correctness has not presented any confidence building.

We hope that in the coming months these issues will be addressed through implementation.”