16th Finance Commission ray of hope for Punjab industrialists
Malerkotla, July 26
Industrialists of the state see a ray of hope for their long-pending issues in the warm response from the secretariat of the 16th Finance Commission to submissions made by them at Amritsar recently.
Among the major issues cited by industrialists were GST, income tax, MSME issues, amended agriculture policy, advanced medical and educational institutes and a special freight corridor, among others. The Finance Commission had agreed to consider solutions to these issues.
Senior Vice-Chairman of Sangrur (including Malerkotla and Barnala) Industrial Chamber Ghanshyam Kansal appreciated the efforts of the senior functionaries of the 16th Finance Commission led by the chairman, Arvind Panagariya. He said the commission had assured them of the consideration of strategic points and suggestions put forward by various stakeholders, including industrialists.
Kansal said, “Besides apprising the commission of our long-pending issues regarding the running and setting up of new industrial ventures, we stressed the need for uniform power rates, a special freight carrier from the southern and eastern parts of India to Ludhiana and the reintroduction of a credit-linked capital subsidy scheme with a threshold limit of Rs 1 crore.” He added that they had also sought an enhancement of the limit of the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme to Rs 1 crore.
The industrialists have also urged the commission to include the textile sector for coverage under Section 80-1B of the Income Tax Act, 1961, for ten years under the Atmanirbhar Programme of the Union Government. The industrialists handed over a communiqué to the chairman of the 16th Finance Commission. It read, “This step will also boost manufacturing in this sector manifold as well as meet the challenge of replacing Chinese or Bangladeshi products. This step will act as a vaccine for the textile sector to come out of the liquidity crunch that is currently prevailing due to COVID-19 and prove a boon for the textile sector.”
