Budget 2024's Focus On Fiscal Consolidation Right Move, Say Stakeholders

The interim Union budget that was presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday was in alignment with market expectations, and fiscal consolidation is the right move forward, according to stakeholders.

"Not expecting any massive or any material announcement, I think it is an opportunity for government before election once again to reiterate the policy direction that they plan to take assuming they come back to power," Abhay Agarwal, fund manager of Piper Serica Advisors Pvt., told NDTV Profit. "I think it has been left at that, which is good with no negative or positive surprise as expected."

Prashant Jain, founder of 3P Investment Managers, said the economy was doing well despite the global headwinds and it was the right time for corporate capital expenditure to take a lead. "I think the focus on fiscal consolidation is the right thing to do because government has taken lead and up the capex significantly."

There were not many expectations from the budget, according to A Balasubramanian, chief executive officer of Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC

Among the big reassurances are the focus on certain social projects, which are supposed to be adding value to the residents of the country as well as helping to build the gross domestic product to next level of growth, Balasubramanian said.

"Creating more jobs in rural India would be very good," Nadir Godrej, managing director of Godrej Industries, said. "Unfortunately, it looks like more people are engaging in agriculture rather than in value-added rural jobs and not enough people are moving away from farm into new jobs."

Godrej said that there was a need to "educate people for the jobs of the future rather than jobs of past".

"All that being said, we need to accept that we are growing at 7%, which is very good in the current global situation," he said. "We should be happy with that, but we should also be cognisant that we can grow faster."