BNCCI terms budget-07 as 'neutral'

Kolkata, Feb 28 (UNI) Bengal National Chamber of Commerce president Shanta Ghosh today termed the Central Budget-07 as 'not very encouraging' as it 'failed' to touch the common man's problems.

BNCCI vice-president K.K.Navada said the budgetary proposals for the 2007-08 fiscal was quite 'neutral'.

Talking to newspersons he expressed his dissatisfaction over the tax collection, saying that the union finance minister had not given any relief to the corporate sector and had resorted to imposing one per cent cess in addition to earlier two per cent, which increased the dividend tax from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent.

Expressing anger over the hike in allocation from Rs 12041 to Rs 14365 to the north east, he said, ''it is just a political move to pacify insurgency in the region.

''There has been no special allocation to Bengal particularly when North Bengal has also been facing similar problems,'' he said, despite the state government's earlier proposal.

Though Mr P Chidambaram had mentioned about the measures to curb inflation, he had failed to specify them, Mr Navada said.

''The common man looks forward to the budget just for this single reason. However, he has not mentioned anything regarding the fall in the prices of essential commodities,'' he said.

Though the budget had given stress on the health sector, AIDS in particular, was given only a meagre Rs 969 crores, which is not enough to combat the ever rising disease.

India has the second largest HIV+ people.

The members of the chamber had the same opinion that spending a hefty amount on the awareness campaign was not enough, the government should take steps to work at the ground level.

The BNCCI, however, welcomed the move of 2.1 per cent surcharge on the Small Scale Enterprises, the new 'Aam Aadmi Biman Yojna' for the rural landless households through LIC and the national means-cum-merit scheme to reduce the dropout ratio in the primary school level.

UNI