Mumbai: The members of the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI), led by its president Perikal M. Sundar, on Friday appealed to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to bring petrol and diesel under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime besides reducing the GST on commodities required for daily needs to contain inflation.
The FKCCI in its memorandum also urged the Finance Minister to waive off of the processing fees to sanction fresh loans, besides enhancing the existing loans granted to the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector.
In addition to this, the FKCCI demanded that the banks and financial institutions should not insist for additional collateral security while providing stimulus to other economic sectors such as garment, hospitality, education etc.
The FKCCI also sought exemption from rigorous and time-consuming procedure in complying with private placement provisions while raising capital, allowing allotment of shares to angel investors at discounted price under Series A funding, bringing back the Companies Fresh Startup Scheme and LLP Settlement Scheme for startups.
The memorandum also demanded the merging of Form DPT 3 (return of deposits form) with annual returns to help reduce the compliance burden for small companies.
Meanwhile, India’s economic damage due to the second wave of Covid-19 and subsequent lockdowns will remain restricted to the April to June quarter, Moody’s Investors Service said in a new macroeconomic outlook.
“We currently expect India’s real GDP to grow at 9.6 per cent in 2021 and 7 per cent in 2022,” it said. “With states now easing restrictions, economic activity in May is likely to signify the trough.”
It assessed the overall economic effect of the second wave to be softer than that during the first wave of pandemic last year, although delivery of and access to vaccines will determine the durability of recovery.
We expect the current lockdowns to have less of an adverse impact on economic activity than the nationwide lockdown in April 2020 because the latest restrictions have been more targeted, localised and less stringent, said Moody’s.
“Also, consumers and businesses have adapted. The second wave has mainly affected aggregate demand in contrast to last year when the national lockdown also constrained supply.”
The 10 states that have been hardest hit by second wave collectively account for more than 60 per cent of the pre-pandemic level of India’s GDP. Four states – Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka – contributed the largest shares among all states in the financial year 2019-20.