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Insufficient succour for the less-privileged

Initial public reactions to the 2004 budget proposals are that although a measure of relief has been offered to some sections of society which are reeling under the cost of living burden, they fail to satisfy the keenly felt need of the people for substantial succour and sustenance in their battle for survival.

Although we do not subscribe to the popular misconception that a government's budgetary plan should shower benefits all around with hardly a care for the long-term viability of the economy, we cannot help but observe that the budget proposals do not go far enough to mitigate the material hardships of the masses.

To be sure, there is some relief in this budget for the middle and lower middle classes with particularly the declared public sector salary hike of 10 percent, the raising of the tax-free allowance for personal income tax to Rs. 300,000 and the 10 percent increase in pension payments but there are, apparently, no immediate concrete gains for the working masses proper. The budget has a considerable entrepreneurial and business sector focus, which could ultimately help in job-generation and in increasing productivity, but if we are looking for concrete measures to include the more impoverished sections in the development process in the short-term, there are hardly any.

There is, of course, an increase in the fertilizer subsidy which could benefit the farming population along with a loan relief scheme for the same segment of society but this would hardly amount to a productive involvement of the peasantry in the development process. Nor is there anything particularly tangible for the industrial worker. These sections of the population, as mentioned before, could gain from an overall revival of the economy but it would be vital to ensure that the benefits really "trickle-down" to the people.

We welcome the streamlining of VAT and its reduction to a single unified band of 15 percent but the State and its institutions need to be robust enough to ensure that the envisaged relief from soaring prices is passed on to the consumer.

For instance, administration of fair prices is a crying need. The people also need to be protected from arbitrary and exploitative behaviour on the part of businessmen and traders. All this would require a revitalizing of the State. Apparently, the State had not succeeded completely in getting the business and entrepreneurial classes to submit to it tax revenues owed to it through the imposition of VAT, at the former rates. This prompted the current reforms in this area which has a close and substantial bearing on government revenue. We hope that the institutional reforms strongly considered by the Government in the field of revenue collection would contribute towards the business interests of the country "giving unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar".

We also appreciate the compulsions under which a Voluntary Retirement Scheme has been offered to public servants, but plans should be in place to ensure that these retiring personnel engage in productive activity which would help in overall development.

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