Tribune News Service
New Delhi, December 30
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday chaired pre-Budget consultations with state finance ministers. The meeting was also attended by some Chief Ministers and Deputy Chief Ministers besides senior officers from states and the Centre.
Union Finance Secretary T. V. Somanathan welcomed the participants and informed them of the importance of this particular consultation meeting, said an official news release.
Most of the participants thanked the Union Finance Minister for financially supporting their States/UTs during the worst months of pandemic, by enhancing borrowing limits, providing back to back loans to States and through Special assistance for capital expenditure.
The participants also gave numerous suggestions to the Union Finance Minister for inclusion in the Budget Speech. Among the suggestions were increased R & D spending, infrastructure status for digital services, rationalisation of income tax slabs, investments in online safety measures and incentives to hydrogen storage and fuel cell development.
On personal income tax, some state finance ministers felt that the personal income tax slabs saw too sharp a jump from 5 per cent to the 20 per cent and 30 per cent slabs. The multiple surcharges on some of the slabs jack up the personal income tax rate to over 40 per cent. Pointing out that the Centre has already sharply reduced corporate tax rates in order to increase compliance and attract more industry, they felt such an approach could be applied to income tax slabs as well.
State finance ministers also sought infrastructure status for digital services in keeping with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Some of the digital services that are in need for this status are Internet backbone, broadband, mobile telecom, cloud services and software, operational security, user identity and data encryption.
Sitharaman thanked the participants for their inputs and suggestions towards Union Budget 2022-23 and assured to examine each of the proposals, said the release.
The Finance Minister had earlier met stakeholders from seven broad sectors over eight interactions. Some of the areas represented at these meetings with Sitharaman were agriculture, industry, infrastructure and climate change, financial sector and capital markets, services and trade, social sector, trade union and labour organisation, and economists.
For all the latest business News Click Here
