Day 87

Yesterday, stand-in Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, has made an announcement of deducting 2% taxes in service tax, custom duty and excise duty on all the items. Now this announcement is going to be a loss of Rs 29,000 crore for exchequer. This announcement has come in the time when all the parties are gearing up their resources for the Lok Sabha elections. So, is it right to make this type of decisions at the election time? Already the country is recovering from the global economic slowdown and this decision has put another load on it. Although this decision is going to save people’s money but this decision has been taken for the sake votes. I think that this is just politics and nothing more than that. The government is trying to attract the voters to vote it again in the office. This tax deduction is not going to help common man very much. Reduction of the service tax, excise duty and custom duty will make the things cheaper but that too very marginally. If we go in the FMCG section, then the effect is that if you are buying 4 soaps then you are saving Re 1 only on the 4 soaps. In construction sector, the steel bars are cheaper now by Rs 500-600 per tonne. That means it’s cheap by Re 0.50-0.60 per kg. A cement bag of 50 kg will be cheaper by Rs 2-3 only. In other consumer goods like TV, an LCD TV of say RS 32,000 will be cheaper by Rs 650 only. So this is the thing if we go in terms of amount which will save. Here I want to ask few questions. Why wasn’t this announcement made by the stand-in Finance Minister when he was presenting the interim Budget last week? Why did he take one week to make this announcement? Is this announcement to attract voters only? According to me, this is just a political propaganda to attract voters. If the Congress party led UPA doesn’t comes in power then the next government will try to make up the gap of the loss of this Rs 29,000 crore. So what is the real use of making this announcement? Is it really to make people comfortable? Is it to give some relief to the common man or is it to get more votes for clear majority? Only the post-election scenario will give the answer.