By Mr. Gautam Hari Singhania

This budget has attempted to address the concerns of various stakeholders of our society from agriculture to social sector, industry, youth and women. Giving a boost to ‘Make in India’ by focusing on manufacturing and enhancing infrastructure and rural connectivity, the budget is aligned to the nation building, economic growth and job creation.

The textile industry welcomes the Government’s focus on promoting domestic manufacturing and the proposed customs duty reductions on wool fibres and wool tops will certainly benefit the wool - blended fabrics segment of the industry.

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We expect the proposed move to streamline multiple labour laws into a set of four codes will largely resolve the legacy issues and enterprise constraints with regards the skilled and unskilled labor force in the country. The industry expects that standardization of various labour related definitions will effectively reduce disputes and bring uniformity in the wages across the states.

The industry also welcomes the idea of a legacy dispute resolution scheme to clear the pending litigations of pre-GST era.

The Government’s major infrastructure boost and improvement of urban-rural connectivity will significantly bring down the logistics cost. The investment to the tune of Rs 100 lakh crore on infrastructure will definitely boost the consumption story of the country.

(The author of this article is the Chairman and Managing Director, Raymond Ltd)