We would like to congratulate the Honorable Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitleyji for offering measures conducive to the growth of the infrastructure sector. Overall it’s a positive budget for the industry. As direct investment in the infrastructure sector will surely lead to increase in the GDP growth of the country.
With the announcement of the renewable capacity target Honorable Minister has re-emphasized the government’s commitment to renewable energy.
The infrastructure sector has been facing funding challenges and some of the measures introduced will surely help this situation. By doubling the cess on coal to Rs. 200 per tonne , the government is creating an additional corpus of funds for clean energy projects. INR 75,000 crore has been apportioned for infrastructure sector. We are happy that it’s a sizable amount.
The Honorable Minister has provided much needed clarity on capital gain tax on the Sponsors, at the time of offering the assets to InvIT, and waiving it off. This was one of the issues which was preventing the implementation of the InvIT . Waiving it away will help this vehicle to take-off and will attract billions of dollars of foreign investments in India.
The National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) with an annual flow of Rs 20,000 crore has been announced and this will help raise investments as equity in infrastructure finance companies which can further fund the Renewable Projects at competitive pricing. This could be used to develop a sizeable IDF to fund the huge capital outlays required to achieve the target of 175 GW by 2022. The IDF can make a substantial contribution to the Infrastructure development and can attract investors if provided tax breaks for the Investors.
