Ruias praise FM for striking balance between growth and inflation

Ruias of Essar group praises the Union Finance Minister Mr.P.Chidambaram for striking balance between growth and inflation in the Union Budget for year 2007-2008.

Comments of Shri. Shashi Ruia, Chairman & Essar Group on Union Budget 2007-08

The Finance Minister deserves credit for striking a balance between growth and inflation in the Union Budget. Increased allocations for rural and social sectors are steps in the right direction. He deserves praise on issues like cut in CST, financing infrastructure through Forex reserves, developing a mortgage guarantee mechanism and promoting development of skilled manpower. His proposals for increasing the dividend distribution tax, additional education cess and extension of MAT are not really enthusiastic for the corporate sector. In view of an already high tax regime, this will affect the global competitiveness of Indian companies especially against China. We hope he will revisit some of these issues during the course of the year for continuing the current growth momentum.

Comments of Shri. Prashant Ruia, Director, Essar Group on Union Budget 2007-08

The Finance Minister deserves credit for striking a balance between growth and inflation in the Budget. His focus on agriculture, rural development schemes including Bharat Nirman, road projects and power sector is expected to give steel demand a fillip. The reduction of customs duty on seconds and defective steel is a step that will encourage dumping of low quality steel from international markets into India. We sincerely hope the Finance Minister will revisit this decision. The steel sector is enjoying a good momentum domestically and globally in terms of growth and investments. The only area that needs attention is freeing up of iron ore reserves for the private sector, for the development of existing and new steel plants.

Source : Equity Bulls

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