In an exclusive interview with BW Businessworld, Sunil Vachani, CMD, Dixon Technologies, shares his views on the Budget introduced on February 1st. Edited excerpts
There will be a BW Report Card – On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate the budget?
Well, I would give it 8.75 definitely. There is something for everybody in this budget. The Finance Minister has ensured that there is something for the middle class, farmers, manufacturing sector, spending on core research and design. So I think it is a great budget overall. If you look at our sector i.e. Electronics and Information Communications Technology sector, there are lots of positive factors because customs duty has been increased across most of the product categories which will the boost make-in-India programme and will ensure than the bulk of the consumption happening in the country is be met through local manufactured products.
Is the employment issue adequately addressed in the Union Budget?
As I said more and more products are manufactured in the country, this is going to create huge jobs in the country. If you look at our sector specifically, it is very labour intensive. In times to come, there will be huge job opportunities that will be created in the ICT sector.
Is the rural distress / agriculture crisis adequately addressed in the Budget?
I think a lot of steps have been taken to address the agrarian crisis especially in terms of MSP going up. This will translate to easing of the stress that is there and will lead to increase in the demand of our products in the rural areas.
What are the downsides and what were your expectations?
We were looking on the increased spending on the R&D. As a country, we hardly spend 1% of our GDP on R&D. (Although) some steps have been taken to encourage investment going into R&D, we would like to see more steps coming in the future.
