Has the budget taken care of core sectors like infrastructure, energy, banking, information technology?
Vinod Gupta: Focus of the budget has been infrastructure and energy sector. Initiatives like inclusion of gas in petroleum products, clarity in NELP (New Exploration Licensing Policy) tax rebate clause and allowing depreciation on investment in gas/petroleum pipeline will give boost to economy. India needs to spend heavily on this sector and these initiatives will attract more players in this sector. Another important aspect is extension of tax holiday for refineries up to 2012. Unfortunately, our reserves are not adequate to meet our fuel requirement. Policy initiatives like this will help in having higher value addition within the country rather than outside the country. This will ease some burden on our Forex. However, in order to attract more private players in this sector and to allow existing players to take part in retail segment, price control mechanism need to be phased out. Vinod Ramachandran: From the telecommunications sector’s perspective, the budget has been slightly disa
