and we earlier spoke to simon lee who is a co-director international business and chinese enterprise program we spoke to him about infrastructure employment and investment let's listen what he had to say i think the most direct way is to have some sort of tax incentive even tax fee because they want huge amounts of money in building all the infrastructure and so some incentive can allow them to actively participate in such construction you know the competition is on global basis many countries especially in southeast asia are all affected seriously seriously by the pandemic so there's a kind of competition so sooner the better and uh still because the india is the fifth or the sixth biggest economy in the world still have many attract attractiveness to attract a foreign investment so so maybe zero tax at the beginning years once they build the infrastructure a lot of their money that they can recruit many um people many employees no uh populations uh manpower is not a problem in india so the things is that how to get the money to attract foreign investment uh i think uh the government should spend more money uh in uh engaging in more building infrastructure because infrastructure can provide long-term uh engine to the economic growth of indian government uh but it's not a very short-term gain because with the infrastructure these are long very huge amount of investment so maybe some sort of incentive to stimulate the construction industry also to attract the foreign uh that foreign direct investment can provide a boost to the construction of the infrastructure and then also with the heavy engagement in the building of the infrastructure the construction industry can employ many people this can really alleviate the uh high unemployment rate comparatively i mean unemployment rates are like seven percent is still high in many economy and then uh when the unemployment rate can be reduced and this can stimulate uh consumption then again uh stimulate the domestic economic growth many countries including india um kids seriously from the pandemic i think the government should announce some sorts of belief to all classes of people especially the middle class because they suffer the most and you know uh gst contribute quite significantly to uh india's revenue so some allowance deductions such as uh tuition fee uh rebates is a home loan interest i think are helpful uh to stimulate consumption uh on the other hand uh the indian government should make some sort of long-term measure about the sustainability and stability of the revenue now um the budget is still in deficits around six percent to gdp uh reduced from uh nine point something uh percent to gdp last year but in the long run uh the government can not totally relied on borrowing or from the very narrow gaps of the middle class or corporate tax still quite low compared to other countries asia you know to generate sustainable weaponry to support huge government expense and we also spoke to andrew kp ling from hong kong he's an international and independent strategist he gave us an insight on how the problem of inequality should be tackled to the upcoming budget in india one of the biggest problems facing india is inequality a lot of the poor farmers especially in the villages um they they do not see that their livelihood have improved a lot in fact there is a great inequality in india uh the top ten percent uh of the in the the richest indians own eighty percent eight zero percent of the nation's wealth and compared with um is only second to russia in terms of inequality so i think that the to create a more balanced society um is uh it requires a great deal of effort and the budget is of course is a very powerful tool to address that so talking about uh uh another important pointer uh mr peranjpe uh we saw last year a big supply chain crisis where does india stand as far as supply chains across the globe are concerned and where is there any opportunity if any and india can convert that opportunity for as far as the supply chain crisis is concerned yes there was a supply chain crisis when it comes to manufacturing chips and also in the shipping and that has affected our exports but i think our biggest uh as it were export is actually brain power you know the work we do not only bpo type of work but the software that we develop so i don't think we were affected as much as other countries but you know the the real paradox of uh last year was that the whole world uh kept emphasizing on the green economy and investing in the green economy including ev and other things which is wonderful but the demand for real commodities oil aluminum steel iron ore coal all of this keeps going up so what's happening is that there is a contradiction between the way the world is moving which is towards green energy and the fact that the old economy has not ended as yet and similarly you see a very interesting phenomenon how some of the biggest ipos are in the new economy and the old economy i mean nika's i think market cap exceeds that of coal india which is the biggest manufacturer of gold in the world so these are the contradictions of our times which india has to negotiate but as i said when i looked at the economic survey the barbell strategy is to compensate and to account for you might say problems on both sides of the spectrum so i think we are well positioned now after a contraction of our economy last year to another growth phase as we come out of omicron i hope that uh you know we are not medical specialists but from what we read it seems as if it's tapering off and certainly it's not as deadly as the second wave of corona the delta variant was so our health infrastructure hopefully will not be completely overwhelmed and the number of able-bodied people who succumb to the second wave i hope that doesn't happen so these are encouraging signs and we spoke to andrew uh mr randy we heard him and he was talking about inequality uh what what are your views on that inequality inequality is a global phenomenon you look at the top 10 richest people in the world they have a bigger share of the world economy the world resources than the bottom 40 percent of the world's population which is almost 3 billion people so 10 individuals in the world have more wealth than 3 billion people so this is one of those times in human history where things are very strange and i'll give you another example the market capitalization of apple one company absolutely it's more than the gdp of india testing yes gdp is less than three trillion but does it mean that uh india as a country as an economy uh as uh you know a nation of 1.4 billion people is is less important than apple one company obviously not so i think that we also see on the other side global philanthropy going to levels that we have never seen in human history not only with bill and melinda gates foundation but many other initiatives so that the private philanthropy of the rich people in the world is almost like the spending of major countries so all i'm trying to say is that to be future ready we have to factor in all these things and what this government has done which is really noteworthy and praiseworthy is that those who are most needy who have no livelihood or who've lost their income they've made sure that food grain has reached these people so that is the way to tackle inequality when the economy comes back into normalcy the same jobs which were lost if not the same similar jobs will be created new sectors will have more employment but the welfare measures of this government are really credit worthy and that has saved a lot of millions and millions of indians from misery and poverty which is unimaginable because the office of spam report estimates that 50 million indians went into poverty because of covet and the government tried to reach all of these people through direct cash transfer direct grain transfer and measures which actually improve their standard of living so i think that and that kind of spending has to go on and i must also say that many corporates even though they had no production their factories were closed they kept paying their workers so the corporates in india have also shown you know compassion and responsibility i think the real crunch has been in the middle people who had shops people had small and medium scale industries those have been shut down and the unorganized sector has no social security to speak of no job security to speak of they have been affected there have been job losses in those incomes you know in that vector of our economy or that sector if you like absolutely and i think only government spending and some social organization on the part of you know i've seen initiatives in big cities where you have food banks you have clothes banks because most of us have surpluses we just need smart systems to distribute these surpluses all of us have clothes we don't need in the winters so we have to have more people's participation to remove or reduce inequality and mr bay over the last few years we have seen some sectors skill sector is easily reskilling itself they are moving up the chain but job crisis is there in india we have been talking about that now startups are being presented as a solution to that that's also more in services sector what about first job crisis our startup they are are the real solution to that and what about jobs in manufacturing sector you see startups may not you know be the solution because they may not hire thousands and thousands of people you know i think we have to create more opportunities for work not just jobs which also means the informal sector of the economy i'm expecting something on that in the budget you know to give them incentives for example you go around people supplying tea or you know small services all over india you know on the pavements you know near intersections these kinds of services these are people who are also self-employed you know they don't rely on the government and we have to incentivize and also regulate some of these sectors so that they also don't become polluting because you see when you have an unregulated vendor they're going to throw that trash all around and who's going to pick up that you know so i think that there's a lot of opportunity in india if we incentivize as well as should i say you know regulate a little bit the unorganized sector and help people help themselves because you saw what happened with the railway entrance exams you know there's a crisis for one government jobs there are lacks of applicants so we have to send the message to the people that these so-called government jobs are going to be especially at the you know lower levels are going to be less and less so people have to learn to help themselves and we have to create the ecosystem for that so just as the startup ecosystem has to be made more robust through less regulation as i was saying uh you know the the economic survey talks about patterns and how the patents in increa india have increased absolutely in comparison with before but we are still so far behind even a small country like korea had 1.6 lakh patents last year china has the most india is far behind we have about 40 50 000 patents a year so i guess we have to make things easy ease of doing businesses to go up in india and ease of ending a business if you have a business and you try to close it in india it's practically impossible you have to show losses for three years before you can close a business you should be able to open a business easily and close it easily and i was talking to mr manish sabarwal sometime back of team lease he's shown us a way to really leverage india's talent pool you talked about skilling but he was telling me about the number of regulations at the central and state level they run into hundreds the permissions required the sanctions you have to take and as i said people are very reluctant to give loans after all the bad loans which the very big cats got the bad loans and ran away so you have to change all this and and make money easily available money should chase good ideas as it happens abroad and in india it doesn't happen absolutely and also i would like to shift focus to one point which uh we didn't discuss it's about bitcoin and blockchain there's something which clearly not many people saw it coming though it was an undercurrent and the youth of this country was heavily involved after all 10 crore accounts were there and government reacted later what what about government's approach as far as bitcoin and blockchains are concerned globally it's a big issue well clearly not all the overall usage of bitcoin and blockchain is in right hands or for right purposes what do you think about this new bitcoin craze although it has come down from peak levels but what about this i think it's uh it's a matter of great concern and the government is cognizant of it it can be used for we can see the budget papers advice being brought in the parliament and here we see this ritual we have seen over the last few years being maintained budget papers the crucial ones being brought to the parliament and we can see them now being the security check happening here and budget paper it's a overall protocol that happens and it's a formality that is done budget papers have been brought in though this time the budget is going to be paperless e-budget we are calling it from the last few years since the kobe 19 pandemic struck so coming back to the fact just a little comment on that the word budget actually means a satchel a leather satchel in which in britain earlier they used to bring these papers of course now the papers run into trunks and trunks but it's really a sign of the times that we are moving to the ee format and the economic survey is available for download i've downloaded it yesterday the statistical tables are available and even a non-specialist but should i say in well-informed citizen of india can now participate in in this very important you know process in the country so going back to bitcoins obviously it's a very difficult area it's cryptocurrencies as the word crypto suggests you can't regulate them because they are non-local and uh the blockchains are impossible to completely track but the danger is that it can be used for illegal activities money laundering and also gambling as you rightly said you know our youth is sometimes not just youth many people are encouraged you know to make risky investments in bitcoins not just bitcoins but a slew of cryptocurrencies which are now available for any of us to invest in with very little regulation and what happens if you make a windfall absolutely taxation you're not taxing your income the only way to find out is you put say one lakh rupees in in some cryptocurrency and it was returned uh let's say it doubled and two lakhs came into your account unless you're asked to ask you're asked to account for that windfall or that doubling and people can say no i don't know where it came from or blah blah right so i'm saying it's a taxation issue it's a it's a money laundering issue it's an illegal activities issue and it's a gambling issue all right on that account we will slip into a short break on vyond our budget coverage will continue here and poetry we will continue to cover budget it's one hours when the budget will be announced in parliament keep on watching beyond we on now available in your country download the app and get all the news on the move
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