Apex exporters body, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) while commenting on the Union Budget 2015-16, said that the Budget has aimed at structural changes in Indian economy focussing on infrastructure, tourism, manufacturing particularly micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME), ease of doing business, and curbing black money.

A firm date of GST and move towards it by raising the service tax from 12 percent to 14 percent is the most notable feature of the budget which will also help exports and may give an additional 1-2 percent GDP push to economy.

"Micro Units Development Refinance Agency (MUDRA) Bank, with a corpus of Rs 20,000 Crores, and credit guarantee corpus of Rs 3,000 crores and Trade Receivables discounting System (TReDS) for facilitating financing of trade receivables of MSMEs will address the liquidity problem of small business said," President, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), M Rafeeque Ahmed said in a press release on Saturday. However, FIEO Chief complimented the Finance Minister for rightly focussing on infrastructure.

Establishment of National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) with an annual flow of 20,000 Crores, Tax free infrastructure bonds for the projects in the rail, road and irrigation sectors, Corporatisation of Ports in public sector to attract investment and leverage the huge land resources and 5 new Ultra Mega Power Projects, each of 4000 MW, in the Plug-and-Play mode will help manufacturing and exports.

Reduction of customs duty and special additional duty on some of key inputs, increase in availing of CENVAT Credit from 6 to 12 months, Online excise and service tax registration in 48 hrs and exemption of service tax on transportation of exports goods from factory to land customs station will add to competitiveness of exports said Ahmed.

However, President FIEO said that he expected reduction, if not abolition of MAT and DDT for SEZ Units, introduction of interest subvention for exports and an announcement of reduction in exports and imports documents in the Budget but hoped that such matters would be looked into shortly before passing of the Budget.

Source:smetimes.in