Union Budget 2025 | “Very Optimistic, Smart Budget”: Bharat Forge Chairman Baba Kalyani To NDTV

You know, I feel the budget is very optimistic and a smart budget. We are, all over the world, especially in India, going through a very dynamic geopolitical environment amidst all the tariff fears and instability that is being witnessed in many countries in the world. And that requires a very stable macroeconomic outlook and fiscal prudence, which is the key. And I think this budget kind of reflects that. Also, there's a continued focus on the major sectors: government capex, infrastructure, railways, defense. Although in the defense area, we would like more. We would like to see a push for defense exports. This is a big opportunity for India to do that, and that would be one of the asks from the industry side.

You know, the one lakh crore relief in the income tax is probably the biggest that the Government of India has ever done, or the Finance Minister ever done, in a budget. I would wait. I would not pass a judgment on that. I believe it's something that is good, that will accelerate consumption. It'll accelerate consumption from the middle class, the salary class. And I still believe that's a good thing to do. The other good things the government has done is focusing on MSMEs, enlarging their size and scope, and giving them help and making them exporters. Any country in the world that aspires to be a manufacturing nation needs to create a much larger MSME sector. I have said this for the last five, seven years. These limits that we have on MSMEs, earlier it used to be five crores, then it became ten crores, they're very absurd. MSMEs in Europe, some of them are one billion euro companies. So I think we need to revisit this, and I'm glad the government is doing that. If you grow the MSME sector, the manufacturing sector grows and employment grows, consumption grows. It's the key to India's manufacturing dreams, if I may call it that. And of course, the government is also focusing on the manufacturing sector itself. There's a manufacturing mission that is put in. And I like very much the focus on agriculture productivity, especially going towards the older Indian crops. Like last year, instead of wheat, we went to millets. Now the focus is on pulses, going to makhana. We need to get back to the old Indian ways of doing things. It is not only healthy, it's easy for the agricultural sector to produce. This imported variety of products that we are trying to copy and make, they really don't work very well. So I'm very happy about that, although I'm not in the agricultural sector, but I think for the country it's good.