XLRI Jamshedpur: Experts brainstorm on Budget 2022 in panel discussion

Jamshedpur, Feb 9: XLRI ExPGDM Finance Committee hosted the Panel Discussion on “Outlook of Union Budget 2022-23.” The session was designed to enlighten the students about the union budget, various economic reforms discussed, and the role of the Budget in economic and industry growth.

The panel members comprising of Industry experts and esteemed faculty included: Narendra (NK) Misra, former executive director finance, Tata Steel, Dr. Arindam Saha, managing director & co-founder, Vista Intelligence, Sumant Parimal, Partner and Chief Analyst, Innogress Professional Services, Tony Thomas, Chief Digital and Information Officer, Signify and Prof. H. K. Pradhan, Finance & Economics, XLRI.

The entire discussion was moderated by Prof. Sabyasachi Sengupta, Finance, XLRI Jamshedpur. The event started with Prof. H. K. Pradhan setting the stage for the discussion to begin, followed by each panel member speaking about the various vital aspects of the Budget.

Narendra Misra spoke on general discussion, and credited the finance minister for presenting simple and uncomplicated budget. He also said that the Budget is an instrument for creating stability in the system.” If we must grow, we have to have stability”. Stability helps in gaining the interest of investors. He praised the points on the Budget:

Dr. Arindam Saha praised the Finance Minister for doing a great job as an economist, but at the time, he felt that she had not done an excellent job as a politician. He expressed concern over the 30% taxation of cryptocurrency and thought that this move is akin to legitimizing the cryptocurrency. He believed that cryptocurrency is not an ideal asset for currency since it is only digital and not backed by any underlying assets such as gold, oil, etc. He felt this taxation move would increase the trading of existing cryptocurrencies (hundreds of them) and lead to the creation of more cryptocurrencies. Moreover, he also felt that the government does not have a regulatory framework to control that situation and monitor the usage of crypto as a currency. He criticized the Budget on agricultural reforms and felt more could have been done in this area.

Sumant Parimal spoke at length about digital initiatives aspects of the union budget. He expressed his view that India must focus on the next generation of technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, metaverse, quantum computing etc. He believed that though digital technologies have helped build the consolidation in the market, increasing efficiency, productivity improvement etc., however, the actual use of technology enhances earnings and productivity manifolds.

Tony Thomas- Budget is revolving around four priorities-Inclusive development, productivity enhancements, financing investments and the gati shakti program. An economic survey prior to the Budget showed good performance, including GST collection at an all-time high. This indicates that policy implementations are going well.

Prof. H.K. Pradhan talked about how the Budget takes from where it left during the last year according to him. For example, in the previous Budget, we had several policies like setting up a development financial institution and the National monetization pipeline to sell the assets in different sectors.