By Dominick Rodrigues
Mumbai : ARCs, revival of NPAs, incentivizing R&D and manufacturing is the desperate cry of business and industry being echoed by its leaders through their Pre-Budget expectations.
Highlighting the importance of Union Budget 2021in the Corona pandemic scenario, Aswini Sahoo, CIO of Arcil (Asset Reconstruction Company (India) Limited, urged for the budget addressing many long-pending issues that help in the ease of doing business in stressed assets.
“The enforcement infrastructure like DRT, NCLT court strength need to be augmented to keep pace with pendency of cases and expected increase in load. Limitation issues, as per IBC, need to modified to protect lenders right vis-a-vis borrowers and should not be a matter of interpretation,” he said, adding “ARCs — though structured as NBFCs — are constrained in their borrowing capacity, and since they play an important role in the banking system, classifying them as priority sector would help in attracting domestic capital to acquire larger assets/portfolio. SME cases — once they become NPAs — find it difficult to revive and need a funding infrastructure in line with Swamih Fund to take care of their revival.”
Digital consumption witnessed a tremendous increase with demand for devices and screens, smart LED TVs skyrocketing during the pandemic and demand per household witnessing minimum two devices and bigger screens, said Jubin Peter, Founder & Chairman, QThree Ventures –a vertically integrated electronics platform for domestic and foreign brands whose offerings span retail, distribution, e-commerce, manufacturing and more for the consumer electronics industry.
“The COVID-19 virus did shake up most businesses and industries in 2020 with the lockdown and physical distancing aspects badly affecting companies that worked on personal interactions and offline stores,” he said, adding “However, over the last few months, macroeconomic indicators are showing signs of recovery and the Government needs to: Incentivize setting up of manufacturing facilities in the country through subsidies, tax holidays; Rationalisation of taxes on TVs, refrigerators, air conditioners reducing tax slab to boost demand and thereby enable more sales; R&D and Design innovation should be encouraged at a rapid pace; incentivize setting up of R&D and design facilities for next-gen technologies such as machine learning, robotics, etc. to help leverage India’s cost-effective science and engineering talent to build our strategic capabilities in core scientific and industrial research, and also act as a multiplier for the broader economy.”
