Ficci seeks lower excise on big cars

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Ficci) has urged the government to lower the excise rate on big cars to the small car levels.

In the Budget, the excise duty on small cars, length not exceeding 400 cm and engine size not exceeding 1200 cc for the petrol cars and 1500 cc for diesel, was brought down from 24 per cent to 16 per cent.

"It is important that the reduction in excise duty in case of big cars would ultimately lead to higher revenues to the exchequer," said the chamber.

The chamber has underlined the need for a well coordinated medium plan to provide incentives to the large private sector investments in agriculture to push the sector's output by 4 per cent.

"Haphazard measures have outlived their utility and only a focused approach will take the sector to higher productivity levels," said Ficci. The chamber suggested incentives by way of 150 per cent weighted deduction of expenditure as in case of research for all investments by the private sector in the agri-value chain.

According to Ficci, the other major drawback is the lack of incentives to push large investments in the social sector.

"The government schemes seem to be exclusively focused on building physical infrastructure for the logistic chain. In the case of health the inadequate facilities of the public health utilities and the poor quality has created a huge mismatch between the demand and supply," said Ficci.

Demand for health services has grown at an annual average rate of 17.5 per cent over the last five years. But supply of services has been hampered as the cost of the long term funds for financing large projects remain high which pushes up the cost much above the affordable rates.

According to the chamber, a major handicap faced by the private sector in research and development areas is the absence of a long-term policy to boost the prospects.

"The current fiscal incentives are short-term in nature and there is an urgent need for having a medium and long-term approach," it said.

The cutting edge technologies need long-term funding and are sensitive to costs.The government could issue clarifications to clear all doubts in this regard, said Ficci.