Tarun Das, chief mentor, CII: The industry will be happy as there are no major negatives. It has cut down customs duty and has covered a lot of industries aswell.
Nimesh Kampani, chairman, J M Morgan Stanley: I think the Finance Minister has done a great job in reining in fiscal deficit, which will be 3.8 per cent of GDP in2006-07.
Saroj Poddar, president, FICCI: A major positive feature is the clear signal on of a Goods and Services Tax (GST) by 2010. This would integrate the economy and make India a single commonmarket.
Anil Aggarwal, president, Assocham: The Budget should have restrained from raising service tax from 10 per cent to 12 per cent till theGST was brought in.
Y C Deveshwar, chairman, ITC: Now when the Finance Minister has been given fiscal space, he does not need to look at short term... He (Finance Minister) can plan forlonger.
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Sunil Mittal, CEO, Bharti Tele-Ventures: A very balanced and remarkablebudget.
Rahul Bajaj, CEO, Bajaj Auto: No new taxes is a big plus for the industry.
Malvinder Singh, CEO, Ranbaxy: The pharma sector has been considered in bits and pieces. Reduction in excise duty on anti-AIDS and anti-cancer drugs is a good step. Removal of Fringe Benefit Tax on free drug samples iswelcome.
Ravi Kant, managing director, Tata Motors: The government must stick to one policy already announced, there must be some kind of synergy andcompatibility in government policy. (On the proposal to reduce excise duty on newly defined smallcars. All petrol cars with engine capacity not exceeding 1200-cc would benefit from this while for diesel cars, the engine capacity should not exceed1500-cc). We should try to make things simpler, thousands of classifications will further complicate things. In the Auto Policy a small car is defined in a simpleway. As per the policy already announced, auto industry makes huge investments, now we cannot keep changing our plans every year. You are being unfair to a section of industry.
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B V R Subbu, president, Hyundai India: The proposal would give a fillip to the small car segment.
Suhas Kadlaskar, director, DaimlerChrysler India: This is not up to our expectations, particularly so when there is a proposal of uniform goods and service tax (GST) of 16 per cent to be introduced in the next fouryears. The government should apply the concessions for all car segments.
K K Swamy, deputy managing director, Toyota Kirloskar Motors: Small carsconstitute 70 per cent of car sales in India. So one just wonders whether extracting higher revenues from the remaining 30 per cent isjustified.
Rajiv Chaba, India president and managing director, GM: As far as the passenger car industry goes, the budget is not on expected lines. We expected the excise duties to come down for all cars and not only on smallcars.
Madhur Bajaj, president, SIAM: We have been requesting for an across-the-board reduction in excise duty for cars and multi-utility vehicles.Hopefully, uniformity would be introduced soon.
