India Inc. disappointed with Mukherjee's budget for 2009-10

New Delhi/Mumbai, July 6 (ANI): India Incorporated on Monday reacted with disappointment to the proposals for Budget 2009-10 introduced by Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

It said that Mukherjee had remained silent on key points like the revamp of fuel policy, corporate tax, and the disinvestment roadmap.

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) benchmark Sensex suffered the biggest fall on any Budget day and in the year too by plunging over 869 points on the BSE on concerns at the high fiscal deficit (6.8 percent) set by the Union Budget.

The Sensex, which started coming down soon after the announcement of budgetary proposals, dipped below the 14,000-point level before closing 869.65 points down at 14,043.40, surpassing the hefty fall of 749 points on January 7.

The key index had touched the day's low of 13,959.44 as all the heavyweight stocks led by Reliance Industries suffered a heavy loss 6.53 per cent. Besides the fiscal deficit, trading sentiment also affected as European stocks dipped to a seven-week low on worries that economic recovery might still be far way off. The 50-share National Stock Exchange index Nifty also tumbled by 258.55 points to 4,135.70, after hitting the day's low of 4,133.70.

Banking sector stocks suffered the most, losing 8.17 per cent to 7,768.63, as ICICI Bank tumbled by 10 per cent and HDFC Bank by 5.88 per cent among lenders as the Budget did not have measures to open up the industry and on concerns that the borrowing plan will reduce the value of bond holdings, brokers said.

Apart from the fiscal deficit, the other worry for captains of industry was the hike in Minimum Alternate Tax from ten to fifteen percent.

The Nifty also gave a thumbs down to the budget announcements.

Mukherjee left the corporate tax, customs and excise duty structure unchanged. He abolished the Fringe Benefit Tax which was the bugbear of the industry. Also, the deadline for Corporate India's demand for a rollout of Goods and Services Tax has been set as April 2010.

He left the Securities Tax unchanged but scrapped the Commodities Transaction Tax. (ANI)