Swamy condemns budget for ignoring basic problems plaguing economy

Chennai, Mar 2 (UNI) Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy today strongly condemned the Union Budget for 2007-'08 presented by Finance minister P Chidambaram as just a poor collage of some ''proposals'' for vested interests.

Addressing a press conference here, Dr Swamy, a former Commerce Minister, lamented that the budget has ignored the basic problems that plague facing the economy.

He also charged that the 30 per cent duty for dog and cat pet food was to oblige a relative of the Congress President who was exporting pet foods of a British company to India.

While, who welcoming the setting up of retail outlets by multinationals, like Reliance, provided they used their profits to help the rural farmers, he charged that the Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) on IT companies would be a disaster. It would be a betrayal to the software companies as two years ago these companies were encouraged to invest, on expectations promise of zero tax till 2010.

He criticised the increase the cess tax for education to 3 per cent. In the last three years, only 18 per cent of the tax was spent on education. The rest was used up in revenue expenditure.

Meanwhile, Dr Swamy said he had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to forward a petition by Hindu Munnani to President A P J Abdul Kalam.

UNI