Industry not pleased with budget

Chandigarh: Even as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government claims to be making all out efforts to attract investment in Punjab, it has reduced the annual budget for the industry and minerals sector by Rs 76 crore as compared to last year.Presenting his first full budget on Friday, finance minister Harpal Singh Cheema announced a budgetary outlay of Rs 453 crore for the industry and mineral sector as compared to the revised budgetary outlay of Rs 529 crore for 2022-23.Cheema, in his maiden budget presented in June last year for a period of nine months, had announced a budget outlay of Rs 485 crore for the industrial sector.Ludhiana-based Badish Jindal, national president of the All Industries and Trade Union, said the state budget was nowhere close to the actual fiscal situation of the state.“Once again the government ditched the industry by not fulfilling the promise of Rs 5 per unit power to the existing industries and the budget for power to existing industries was merely raised from Rs 2,027 crore to Rs 2,210 crore,” he said.Jindal said no budget had been allocated for running the train for exporters and there were insufficient funds for upgrading infrastructure for industrial areas.Secretary, Dera Bassi Industries Association, Rakesh Ratan Aggarwal said he did not find the budget to be industry-oriented as the state government had not hiked the capital outlay for the infrastructure development. “The industry was expecting higher allocation for incentives to the industry so as to reduce the delay and per unit power rate to be Rs 5 in real sense,” said Aggarwal.Jindal said in the last year’s budget, the Punjab government proposed Rs 100 crore for focal point and then reduced it to Rs 60 crore in the revised budget with an intimation to the industries. But in the budget for 2023-24, it has further been reduced to Rs 50 crore, he said.The finance minister on Friday said the AAP government would continue its support to the industries for which an outlay of Rs 3,751 crore had been provisioned in fiscal 2023-24, which is an increase of 19% over the previous year budget estimates.He further said for capital subsidy to industrial units, Rs 75 crore and for industrial focal points an initial amount of Rs 50 crore had been proposed in the budget.Cheema also informed that an amount of Rs 2,700 crore had been provided by the state government for providing subsidised power to the industrial units and a total of Rs 3,133 crore was proposed to be provisioned in fiscal 2023-24.
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