TANMAY OBSERVES!

Indian Budget 2010 Countdown:

Union Budget is scheduled to be announced on 26 Feb 2010 and the day is nearing fast. There are many websites which are totally concentrating on this topic and below are some of them along with Sector Wishlists:

Official Budget Site: http://indiabudget.nic.in/
Budget Glossary: http://www.indianofficer.com/forums/indian-economy-wiki/3586-budget-glossary.html
Reuters: http://in.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/india-budget-2010
Moneycontrol: http://budget.moneycontrol.com/
MSN News: http://news.in.msn.com/moneyspecial/budget2010/news.aspx
Livemint: http://blog.livemint.com/budget2010/
Times of India: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/budgetspecial.cms
Bloomberg UTV: http://www.bloombergutv.com/budget2010
Financial Chronicle: http://www.mydigitalfc.com/panelview/29681
BusinessWorld: http://businessworld.in/bw/Economy_Budget_Year_2010
Business Standard: http://www.business-standard.com/runup10/
Financial Express: http://www.financialexpress.com/budget10/


What is expected:
Budget is always a balance between growth and fiscal prudence as Fiscal Deficit is touching above 6% already but even developed nations like US have around 10% Fiscal Deficit. Those are in recession, we have merely faced a slowdown. But to come out of slowdown we have had to resort to stimulus measures and measure among them have been Cut in excise duty and Service Tax which was worth nearly Rs 30000Cr and there were 3 stimulus packages involved-
Package 1: http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report_highlights-of-india-s-fiscal-stimulus-package_1212043
Package 2: http://www.india.com/news/india/govt_announces_second_stimulus_package_2381
Package 3: http://southasia.oneworld.net/todaysheadlines/india-announces-third-stimulus-package 

If the excise duty is reversed AUTO, CEMENT are the sectors to be affected and Service tax reversal would affect all the services which come under that ambit. Stimulus measures have really helped the economy as GDP is once again recovering to go towards 8% growth mark and Industry body Assocham has claimed that the stimulus measures have helped the industry in creating 19% more jobs during October-January 2009-10 over the same period last year. But recent move by FM to decontrol some of the fertilizers gives a feeling that Government is trying to reduce subsidies than to kill the ready-made demand created because of stimulus, it will be interesting to see what actually goes through on 26th!