Budget 2023-2024 – Roadmap for India’s Growth Story (Part -2)

In continuation to our previous blog on the Budget announcements and the related sectors which will benefit from the same, below is some more data on a couple of other important sectors where the government has a huge focus, which has been reflected in the budget announcements.

In any economy’s growth story, many sectors give growth in the long story. Out of them, metal, cement, and the infrastructure sector are the pillars to sow the seed of economic growth.

• Capital Goods Sector:

To turn the economy back on the growth track, capital expenditure has to be increased; as done in the Union Budget 2023-2024, the Finance Minister revised the capex upwards by 33%. This is a major sentiment changer for the sector and the industry for the upcoming quarters as the order flows from the government may get enhanced in the coming days.

• A massive capital expenditure for the railway routes of around 2.4 lakh crore has been allocated which may trigger massive employment and order flow for the sector. Higher costs will create more business for EPC and consulting players in the rail route space, like L&T the market leader.
• Service of Safeguard has gotten an assignment of Rs 5,93,538 crore for FY24, higher by 1.5% versus FY23 re-examined gauges and 13% versus planned gauges. This will help companies like BEL and MTARTECH for better order inflows.
•  Augmentation of alleviation in the customs obligation on the import of specific parts and data sources like camera focal points and continuation of the concessional obligation on lithium-particle cells for batteries for one more year. 
• Decrease in the fundamental tradition’s obligation on pieces of open cells on television boards to 2.5% from 5%. It will help companies like Dixon Tech to reduce costs.

• Infrastructure and Cement:

The Government has given special preference to Infrastructure development. The budgeted Capital expenditure for Infrastructure Development has been hiked by a whopping 33% to Rs 10 lakh crores compared to Rs 7.5 lakh crore last year. However, the Real expenditure in 2022-23 is expected to be around Rs 7,28,274 crore versus Rs 7,50,246 crore, which shows weakness in the execution of government projects.

To promote Infra spending at the state level and to promote the state to undertake urban planning and reform actions to transform the cities for a sustainable tomorrow, the central government has decided to continue the 50-year interest-free loan to state governments to spur spending in infra and incentivize the state for complementary policy actions.

The Outlay for PM Awas Yojana, the government’s flagship program to provide affordable housing to the urban poor, has been enhanced by 66% to over Rs 79000 crore. While the allotment towards the scheme has increased, the execution remains poor.

Railways have always received special attention from the government. This year the budgeted allocation for the railway capex is the highest ever at Rs 2.40 lakh crore. This amount is approx. 9 times the outlay made in 2013-14. With a view to boosting connectivity Rs 31,850 crore have been allocated for the new lines, and 4,600 for gauge conversion has been made.

With a vision to provide clean drinking water to every household, the government has allocated Rs 70,000 crore in the budget this year to Jal Jeevan Mission which is considerably higher than last year’s allocation of Rs 50,011 crore.

Until now, we have covered four important sectors from the budget point of view and have given some detailed insights on the same.  We will release the third part following the trend from the budget announcements.