PUNE: Economists present for a discussion on the Union Budget at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) on Monday shared their disappointment, saying it failed to address the issue of ongoing economic slowdown in the country.

The panel included GIPE Professor Pradeep Apte, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) Director Rathin Roy, India Development Foundation (IDF) Research Director Shubhashis Gangopadhyay,  National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM) Director KL Dhingra and was moderated by economist Ajit Ranade.

Economist Vijay Kelkar was also present at the event.

Sharing his views on the Union Budget, Professor Apte called for increased coordination between the State and Centre for better execution of planned initiatives. 

“The initiative on eNAM was announced five years back but the progress has not been satisfactory. Similarly, the initiative on SEZ also failed. We would have the smallest SEZ in the world. We must note that the ease of doing business was missed out when it comes to the agriculture sector,” said Professor Apte.

NIPFP Director Rathin Roy said the need to collect accurate tax as projected in the Budget and any shortfall in tax collection would impact the planned initiatives of the government. 

He said the government was failing to collect tax as they had projected, which has impacted their spendings. KL Dhingra said the ease of business rankings has improved, to which the panellist said that despite improvement in the rankings, it has failed to increase capital investment in the country.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay said important sectors are health, education and real estate and there 

has been hardly any progress in these fields in the last three decades. Vijay Kelkar said the Budget failed to say “we are in a major recession period”.