Budget 2022: What Dalal Street wants

With the Union Budget being around the corner, as part of our special segment, What Market Want, CNBC-TV18 spoke to Nilesh Shah, MD, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management, Prashant Khemka, Founder, White Oak Capital Management, and Saurabh Mukherjea, Marcellus Investment Managers, to understand Dalal Street's 2022 wishlist.

First and foremost, the market wants a pro-growth Budget, Shah mentioned. Shah believes it is crucial for the Budget to support consumption. He cautioned that the Budget should not tinker with anything related to taxation in the capital markets.

He said, “The market ideally wants a Budget, which is pro-growth, which ensures that growth continues to accelerate in FY23. It should also support consumption, especially at the bottom of the pyramid as consumption still stays below pre-pandemic level and it should not tinker with taxation related to capital markets.”

Shah believes fiscal prudence is more important at this point than fiscal profligacy. He sees a need to assess if divestment and asset monetisation can be carried out better.

He said, “It is important for us to maintain fiscal prudence rather than fiscal profligacy. Our debt to GDP ratio is fairly low compared to many developed as well as an emerging markets. We also have a reasonably large parallel economy, which if added to GDP will ensure that our fiscal deficit is over-reported. But anyway fiscal prudence is our path."

"What I will recommend government is that let us focus on raising non-tax revenues. In divestment, we have never achieved budgeted targets, is there a better way to do divestment,” he added.

Meanwhile Khemka believes the Budget should look to improve ease of doing business. He said, "We have made very strong strides over the last seven odd years in improving the ease of doing business in India and I think from a global investors' perspective, and even domestically, I think what would be structurally most pro-growth is to take actions, policy initiatives, which further improves the ease of doing business."

Mukherjea, on the other hand, believes that the government should continue to be fiscally responsible. He is desirous of a Budget in which the government continues to consolidate the fiscal deficit. However, he believes it might be difficult for the government to pull back on spending given the active political calendar ahead. Additionally, he is of the view that the government may try to push the divestment agenda. Mukherjea expects GST collections will also be looked at well by the government this time around.

He said, "Obviously, they are trying to push the privatisation agenda through, with BPCL and CONCOR. But beyond that, the challenge for them will be how do you generate further revenues, given that the GST collections are not quite what they should have been three, four years into its existence; that is where they will have a very hard look at- exemptions and various loopholes in our taxation construct, both for individuals and for corporates."

“So overall I expect the government to continue pressing the capex acceleration. They have done a good job of it through COVID, using the government capex engine, to stimulate the economy. I think the government will make a concerted push to jack up revenues now that the economy is emerging very nicely from COVID with strong GDP growth,” he explained.