In a year when the Budget is coming just ahead of the elections, it is normal to expect some relief on the personal taxation front. After all, if government wants to please the middle class with 10% reservation, it would be much simpler to just offer them tax benefits that will enhance their effective income.
Mutual funds have emerged as pivotal players in the Indian capital markets. In the last 5 years, we have seen AUM of mutual funds tripling from Rs.8 trillion to Rs.25 trillion. The SIPs are flowing in almost to the tune of $1.2 billion per month and there are more than 2 crore SIP accounts. But, what are mutual funds expecting from the Budget?
With the interim budget coming up on February 01st, what are the key things that the equity markets are expecting? Actually, there are 5 key demands.
In the last one month we saw a sharp appreciation in the price of gold and the Yen. A 4% appreciation in these safe haven assets in a month is not regular. But more importantly, it is the mix of Yen and gold that is portentous.
For the month of November the GST collections came in sharply lower at around Rs.92,000 crore. Barring April and October, GST collections never managed to touch the magic figure of Rs.1 trillion. For the full fiscal year 2018-19, the GST shortfall is expected to be nearly Rs.100,000 crore. That is a very large gap to bridge and it will have to be managed through other sources of revenues or higher borrowings. The challenge is to give a boost to GST collections. How to go about?
