Budget 2019 should bring major economic reform

By Jugal Kataria,

"Indian economy has been in need of major reforms from many years now. The 2019-2020 budget, we expect that the government may announce major financial sector reforms which shall drive momentum to India’s bigger goal of becoming the USD5 trillion mark. However, in the current stir of the NBFC liquidity crisis, it has been quite grim for companies in the sector to do business appropriately. To remove NBFC from this crisis, we are hopeful that a new budget will introduce new norms and effective solutions to revive the NBFC sector which well has a positive impact on the economy. The creation of a dedicated liquidity window for non-banking finance companies (NBFC) sectors, review of interest rates on Small Savings Scheme and banks' non-performing assets (NPAs or bad loans) apart from other issues should be addressed on priority. Another vital expectation is that the rate cuts which have been availed to the banks be forwarded to NBFC-MFIs as this will help us to pass on the benefits to our customers as well. With regards to the MSMEs, as per Omidyar Network and BCG report, digital lending to MSMEs will grow 10-15 fold by 2023 which will provide easy access to credit. So, we can expect the finance ministry may assign increased funding for the digital lending sector. At present, the small businesses are required to borrow money from informal sources which in return charge high-interest rate.”

The author is CFO at Satin Creditcare Network Ltd.