Affordable Housing, Infra Growth, Boost to Manufacturing Likely to be in Focus of Budget: Assocham

Greater focus on green mobility, affordable housing, holistic infrastructure development and a big push to manufacturing, along with boosting consumption demand, are expected to find prominence in the forthcoming Union Budget, said an Assocham-Primus paper.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on Tuesday in Parliament.

Highlighting that the first Budget of the Narendra Modi 3.0 government will also include a long-term blueprint for making India a developed nation by 2047, the paper listed areas that would require the government's greater attention and priorities for realising the national goals.

"While the Budget would attend to the immediate requirements of boosting consumption, investment and augmenting the supply side of the economy, it is also expected to lay a roadmap for the bigger goal of scaling up national income to a level of developed nations," said Assocham President Sanjay Nayar.

He further said the government has the fiscal space to spend on capex but recycling the funds from monetisable operating assets would be strategically a better strategy to manage it even better.

The Assocham-Primus paper said the wheels of the Indian economy will increasingly run on green fuel. The directional shift is gathering pace across different levels.

It expects the launch of PMAY 2.0, incorporating components like Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP) and Beneficiary Led Construction (BLC) to tailor housing solutions to financial capabilities of large sections of the population.

"India Inc is expecting a major thrust in the forthcoming Budget on consumer demand, especially among the middle-class people, while reforms-friendly policies will continue more vigorously with several investment-oriented and Ease of Doing Business measures," said Assocham Secretary General Deepak Sood.

Nilaya Varma, co-founder and CEO, Primus Partners said to achieve the vision of Viksit Bharat, the government needs to prioritise and enable a shift from agriculture to manufacturing to provide a pathway for employment.

"Support for core engineering-led manufacturing (that would provide jobs), supporting clusters for strengthening MSMEs and supporting/creating new clusters like EV, electronics and aircraft manufacturing is critical. This needs to be done while advancing towards net-zero energy," he said.

The paper also stressed the need for a national agriculture infrastructure mission with a focus on improving logistics like cold storage, processing units, and packaging facilities to reduce post-harvest losses and ensure better price realisation for farmers.

Promotion of sustainable and climate resilient agriculture will be a road map for de-carbonisation in agriculture for the next 10 years and help India meet its net-zero commitment by 2070, the paper said.