Normally after the annual budget speech industrialists, self-appointed pundits and talking heads on TV are effusive in their praise for the Finance Minister even if the budget is a poisonous mix of enormous rise in taxes to pay for soaring salaries of useless civil servants and a colossal waste of taxpayer money on handouts to bribe the ' vote bank '. Not this time. The final Vote on Account by our most revered Finance Minister has been greeted with snorts of derision by the usual lackeys which shows that everyone has given up on the Congress coming back to power in the general elections in a couple of months time. Every figure cited by the FM has been questioned and the consensus is that he has deliberately messed up the economy for the next government without going so far as to invite a credit downgrade. For a start he has achieved his fiscal deficit target of 4.6% for the current financial year by deferring oil subsidies of Rs 350 billion to the next fiscal and forcing public sector banks and companies to pay vastly increased dividends to the tune of Rs 470 billion.
When questioned about how he had forced public sector units to pay increased dividends he said," That is the owner's money and the owner is saying if you have no use for the money then please return a part of it to me because I have other legitimate uses for that money." Like what? Swanning off to Davos when India is counted in the Fragile Five. You are not the owner of these companies, we are. Tax revenues for the current fiscal was estimated at Rs 10.29 trillion but till December 2013 only Rs 6.34 trillion had been raised which means around 40% of the estimate has to be raised in the final 3 months of the financial year. Surely impossible. Yet the FM estimates that tax revenues for the next fiscal will rise by 19%, income from divesting shares in public sector companies will raise Rs 569 billion, when he has been able to raise only Rs 160 billion, and the GDP will grow by 6%. Clearly he is setting the bar very high hoping to blame the next finance minister if he fails to achieve these targets. He has delayed payment of Rs 139 billion to the IMF. In a cynical move he has reduced excise duty on cars by 4%, on SUVs by 6% and on capital goods, electrical products, TVs, fridges, washing machines, computers and cell phones by 2% hoping to entice some cheap votes. A thoroughly unprincipled man to the last. This time nobody is buying his bluff.
When questioned about how he had forced public sector units to pay increased dividends he said," That is the owner's money and the owner is saying if you have no use for the money then please return a part of it to me because I have other legitimate uses for that money." Like what? Swanning off to Davos when India is counted in the Fragile Five. You are not the owner of these companies, we are. Tax revenues for the current fiscal was estimated at Rs 10.29 trillion but till December 2013 only Rs 6.34 trillion had been raised which means around 40% of the estimate has to be raised in the final 3 months of the financial year. Surely impossible. Yet the FM estimates that tax revenues for the next fiscal will rise by 19%, income from divesting shares in public sector companies will raise Rs 569 billion, when he has been able to raise only Rs 160 billion, and the GDP will grow by 6%. Clearly he is setting the bar very high hoping to blame the next finance minister if he fails to achieve these targets. He has delayed payment of Rs 139 billion to the IMF. In a cynical move he has reduced excise duty on cars by 4%, on SUVs by 6% and on capital goods, electrical products, TVs, fridges, washing machines, computers and cell phones by 2% hoping to entice some cheap votes. A thoroughly unprincipled man to the last. This time nobody is buying his bluff.
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