Budget gives go by to reform process: Yashwant Sinha

Kolkata, Mar 02 (UNI) Former union finance minister Yashwant Sinha today charged the UPA government with throwing the country's reform programmes to the wind and said it had 'failed miserably' to control inflation and low interest regime.

Analysing the 2007-08 union budget proposals Mr Sinha alleged that unlike previous years, this time Finance Minister P Chidambaram had failed to generate any sizeable scope of employment opportunity for the masses thereby widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

Referring to the government's 'failure' to effectively deal with the expenditure management by not reducing the expenditure, Mr Sinha said though a major thrust was given on the growth of agriculture, the absence of any farm subsidy or lower farm credit rates in banks and other financial institutions had raised questions among the people.

Making a comparative study between the 'growth oriented budgets during the NDA rule and those being presented by the UPA regime,the senior BJP leader felt the prime reason behind the spiralling inflation was the 'failure' of the government to keep the price tags of essentials under control by its 'lackdaisical attitude'.

Referring to the proposed government initiatives towards the growth of infrastructure, education and health programmes,Mr Sinha claimed that all additional allocations proposed under these heads were an attempt to hoodwink the public through jugglery of figures.

Citing examples he said while Mr Chidambaram had allocated Rs 6,500 crores for the development of higher education, he had suggested mopping up of about Rs 5,500 crores from the additional one per cent cess,to be imposed as additional mandatory burden on people.

Mr Sinha was equally critical about the government proposals for not providing any useful sops to the tax payers besides providing them only mini relief. On the contrary the increased tax on dividend payment would make the corporate front unhappy.

In terms of indirect taxes too there was no direction to generate substantial revenue, he said and ridiculed the announcement regarding minor relief in FBT.

''All such contradictory steps of Mr Chidambaram reminded me of queen Mary Antoinnete of France who advised her people to eat cake instead of bread which was not available,'' Mr Sinha said while referring to the finance minister's decision to wave taxes for canine food leaving human beings mostly high and dry.

The day long budget discussion was organised under the aegis of the Indian Chamber of Commerce(ICC)in presence of several leading industrialists and economists of the region, including ICC President S K Bangur and Economist Abhirup Sarkar.

Later Mr Sinha took part in a similar discussion,organised by the Institute of Charterted Accountants berfore departing for New Delhi.

UNI