Retail investors have been ignored

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Rajiv Bajaj: Mar 01 2013, 06:14 IST

The Budget does nothing much to change the plight of the retail investor except allowing him to stagger his investments in RGESS over three years, and allowing even people with an annual income of R12 lakh (earlier R10 lakh) to avail the tax deduction. Retail investor interest in equity markets has waned over the past two-three years, but had shown some signs of bottoming out over the past five months. We expected the Budget to speed up the recovery in sentiment, but that has not been the case.

A key expectation from the Budget was that it shall enable higher household savings and ensure that more of that flows into financial instruments. Apart from the minor tweak in RGESS and a promise to introduce inflation-indexed bonds/national security certificates, nothing much was done in this direction. In terms of investment too, the Budget doesn’t make it any easier for the retail investor to invest in financial markets. The proposal to hike dividend distribution tax on debt mutual fund schemes from 12.5% to 25% for individual and HUF investors is a dampener and shall discourage investors from investing in a product that has been one of the very few bright spots for investors in mutual funds over the past five years. Rather, despite the concern over rising flow of household savings into real estate, additional incentives have been provided to home buyers.

It was a pleasant surprise to see the Budget focusing this much on insurance, MFs and capital markets. Buying insurance has been

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