Ahead of the new coalition government’s first budget in July, Sanjiv Puri, President of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), shared his expectations with Moneycontrol. His wishlist includes a boost to formalised skilling and social infrastructure, and a push in rural investment through public capex.
"We are looking at significant areas of reform to be taken forward, some of which fall at the intersection of the centre and the state, like land, labour, agriculture, power, and even fiscal sustainability at a consolidated level,” said Puri.
Puri noted that skilling is a critical area and the share of "formalised skilling" has to go up significantly, as it's quite low. "This is an area, given our demographic, that we need to invest in,” he said. The aim is to skill a quarter of the total workforce by 2030, he added.
Regarding social infrastructure, Puri said that public expenditure on health and education needs to increase to 3 and 6 percent of GDP, respectively.
He also underscored a need to enhance rural investment through public capex. “A sharper focus on rural, housing, and agriculture-related measures, among others, is required,” he said. Rural investment should include the creation of last-mile connectivity to markets, and ‘smart village programmes’ that leverage technology to transform the rural landscape.
“It is the right time to look at an integrated rural development hub, which would service a group of villages,” Puri suggested. Highlighting agriculture, he noted that rural investment needs to focus on enhancing productivity through a cluster-based approach, as mentioned in the interim budget, and on building resilience to weather events.
Further, he said that initiatives like ‘Drone Didi’ need to scale up. The scheme aims to train women to operate drones for agricultural purposes such as crop monitoring, sowing, etc., thereby creating new livelihood opportunities.
“Industry also has a role to play in all this. It is not one-sided. We have to do our bit,” he said.
Other suggestions by the CII President included encouraging states to reduce stamp duty on land transfers to 3-5 percent, developing robust carbon markets with incentives and disincentives to promote green transition, rationalising capital gains taxes, rationalising GST to a three-rate structure (from four), and bringing petroleum products, electricity, and real estate under GST.
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