Budget 2020: Experts discuss the CNBC-TV18 and Dhruva Advisors' CEO poll

What is causing this slowdown? The industry believes it is a combination of a lack of demand and lack of credit. 42 percent of CEOs blame bad loans and slower credit growth, another 42 percent blame the slowdown in consumption.

So what should be the major macro theme of the budget? An overwhelming majority of 71 percent believe encouraging infrastructure spending to be the big budget theme.

What should be the key policy thrust? A majority of 29 percent want land and labour reforms to get top billing. 22 percent expect more monetary easing, 19 percent want measures for real estate and 17 percent want privatisation and divestment to be the key policy thrust.

When asked to rate the government's efforts on improving the ease of doing business on a scale of 1 to 10, 41 percent of CEOs gave a rating of between 5 to 7, 35 percent gave a rating of under 5 and 23 percent gave a rating of above 7.

When asked what should be the most important direct tax theme in this budget, a majority 50 percent of CEOs voted for personal tax reforms. 24 percent of CEOs called for the implementation of the direct tax code, 21 percent wanted faster dispute resolution and settlement.

To discuss the findings of the poll CNBC-TV18 spoke to Sangita Reddy, president of FICCI and joint MD at Apollo Hospitals Group, Vikram Kirloskar, president of CII and vice-chairman of Toyota Kirloskar Motor, Dinesh Kanabar, CEO of Dhruva Advisors LLP, Ashok Wadhwa, Group CEO of Ambit and Praveen Kadle chairman of Tata Capital.

Kanabar said, "Overall people are expecting the government to be very focused on sectors which will boost consumption, which will put money back in the system, which will ensure the expansion of credit and which will create jobs. So, those are the emerging themes and rightly so."

While giving his expectation as far as direct taxes are concerned, Ashok Wadhwa said, "If you look at our GDP construct, 75 percent of our GDP is contributed through the consumption cycle and the consumption economy and 25 percent of our GDP is really contributed through the investment and the capex cycle. Obviously, with a focus on GDP, with focus on trying to revive the economy, we have to focus on whatever supports consumptions at this point in time."

Kirloskar said, "The corporate tax reduction that was announced before the budget will certainly help in bringing in projects which may not have come to India earlier. We are now more competitive or as competitive as other countries in South East Asia. If you look at most industries in last few years or last 10 years, we have been planning our investments based on an expectation of 7-8 percent growth rate and suddenly you end up with a 5 percent growth rate for a year or declining growth rate, then you end up with excess capacity."

On her expectations from budget 2020, Reddy said, "We need to make multiple interventions, it is not just one big silver bullet here. Consumer spending is the single biggest most important thing to bring back confidence, let manufacturing start producing again and the unsold inventory of houses in this country is at the highest ever. 12-15 lakh units of homes are unsold, so consumer spending, consumer confidence is I think the single biggest one. For that, you need to pump-prime the economy by an influx of cash. We do not mind a slight expansion of the fiscal deficit."

Kadle said, "The problem is in the availability of credit in the market. The last 2-3 years have seen a significant NPA accumulation. Even after the IBC structure has been put in place, the NPAs are still at around Rs 9.5 lakh crore on the balance sheets of the banks which is almost 9.2 percent of the balance sheet of the banks, so there is a big amount which is locked there in the form of NPA and something like what US government did after the sub-prime crisis, if the bad bank versus good bank is kind of created, it is the right time to do that."