New Delhi: In an exclusive interaction, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman defended her budget announcements as positive.
When mentioned about not having an encouraging impact on the corporates, the Finance Minister said that: "We will have to wait till a normal trading day like Monday to see the actual impact of the budget announcements on the corporate sector."
Despite it being a Saturday and a non-trading day, both the stock exchanges were open today for trading; however, with a caveat that shares bought today could only be liquidated only on next working day i.e. Monday.
While the BSE Sensex lost 987 points and Nifty 300 points even as the FM Nirmala Sitharaman tweaked downwards the tax rates and restructured tax slabs into five.
The proposed tax regime is expected to leave more disposable income in the hands of consumers and hence boost consumption demand which is considered one of the main factors leading to the decline in the GDP growth.
Read more:Budget 2020: Know the announcements
Amongst other positives she also pegged the nominal growth for next fiscal at 10 per cent and was hopeful that the fiscal deficit would hold around 3.8 per cent for the current fiscal and 3.5 per cent for next fiscal.
On the question that the corporates were expecting exemptions in STT, CCT and LTCG and were dismayed when it was not realised in the union budget she said that: "I have given a fillip to the FPI by increasing the investment limit from 9 per cent to 15 per cent in corporate bonds. This is a positive move and would further deepen the bond market."
Besides, the government was also looking at opening up other government securities for foreign investors.
Experts believe that increasing the Foreign portfolio investment (FPI) limit in corporate bonds is also likely to have a positive impact on the currency and is expected to underpin the Indian Rupee to around the level of 72.50 against the US Dollar.
Previously, BSE & NSE operated on Union Budget 2015-16 presentation day on February 28, 2015 by the former and late Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
(- Sanjay Thapa, Delhi-based Senior Journalist.)
