Ramesh Damani, Member, Bombay Stock Exchange

Quite disappointed. If he had told me that the market went up 79.5% after the election, for this budget I would say that the gap would not be sustained. I think we were looking for the three Ds--disinvestment, decontrolling and deregulation and I was disappointed. There was no vision; there was no intellectual architecture from this budget. We see more like a budget for the 1980s when we had a commanded and controlled economy as opposed to now we have a very compelled economy that India is now the leading growth engine of the world. It didn’t seem the budget to fit the state of a nation.

You could have asked me the number 100 times and each time I would have come with a greater number than Rs 1120 crore which is the amount which is flashing on all television screens. It is perplexing to me. You have a mandate out there. The market expectation is so high. Rs 1100 crore from disinvestment, the QIPs the private sector is doing is much better. I think if that is the number they are going for they are aiming way too low and it will be a major disappointment. I hope they will articulate some new disinvestment policy in the next two-three months, but Rs 1,120 crore is low.

I think minimum alternate tax (MAT) will be taken very badly by corporate India. I think 10% rate was fine we could have dealt with MAT--15% or 50% increase is extraordinarily large to do for MAT. There have been giveaways in terms of FBT which should not have been implemented in the first place. You cannot be thanking them for doing away with the tax which was bad to begin with. Other than that the market needed a roadmap that this is how the economy will look five years from now and this is the place to start and this is the cue that it is three months after the government came to power. It is not an excuse that the market will accept because they have a 17.5% gap based on the buoyancy in the market condition. So I think that there is just an overall sense of disappointment. I think the Indian economy continues to form its 7-8% growth rate. The markets would recover and stocks will recover. But there has been some disappoint with the budget it is my feeling.

Probably not that negative but I would say that the higher end like at 4500 seems to be market could be hard to take out that range. If it cannot go higher it will probably trend lower and try to console its base. In that sense the trigger that the market needed to cross 4500 and move on to 5,000 perhaps is now overcome. It is unlikely that in the near event to cross 4500-4550.

We will carry on. I pick stocks for living and I am sure there will be plenty of good stocks to pick in the bargain bin if you will in the next few days. But with respect to the index, I think we have seen high amount of mark for the immediate future at least. I think it is going to be hard to see the Nifty break 4,550 now.

They deserve to correct. Some of these companies are trading at 20 times salese. What the government is going to offer them that would justify the number of 15 times sales or 20 times sales. They were just going up based on some pre-budget hype and I do not have a positive view on the stocks from this point. I think there is something for education that you buy the suppliers rather than the service providers in this case.