FE Editorial : Budgeting for action

Economists will have their eye on the fiscal deficit the finance minister will project for FY14 on Thursday, and fiscal purists will examine whether the numbers make any sense at all—Citi economists, for instance, reckon a R70,000 crore deferral of subsidy payments is on the cards for achieving the 5.3% fiscal deficit target for FY13 itself. Practical businessmen, on the other hand, will be looking for signs of stability in taxation practices—will the FM roll back the retrospective taxation, or Vodafone amendment, brought in by his predecessor and will he make any announcement on going slow on the rash of transfer pricing cases made out by the taxman in companies as diverse as Shell and Nokia? A panel discussion on the occasion of the FE Best Banks Award last week had some interesting points in terms of what businessmen were looking for as well as some replies from representatives of the political class.

While much of the finance ministry-RBI discourse over the past year has centred around the critical role of interest rates, HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri was unequivocal in saying interest rates were not holding back investments, it was the shortage of coal and the lack of environment clearances that needed to be tackled—indeed, Puri’s view was that, were this to be tackled, many restructured loans could once again move back to the standard loan bucket. US private equity firm Blackstone’s India chairman Akhil Gupta was more forthright while talking of

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