NEW DELHI : The exercise for the budget for 2006-07 gets off the ground on Monday with Finance Minister P. Chidambaram holding his first pre-budget consultation with India Inc. Such meetings are to run through the week with economists, agriculturists and trade unions to help North Block get a broad picture of the ground realities which will serve as major inputs while framing the budget.

The three apex chambers of trade and industry would be represented at the meeting by FICCI president Saroj Poddar, CII president Y.C. Deveshwar and Assocham president Anil Agarwal.

Apart from them, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Anil Ambani, Sunil Mittal and Swati Piramal will be participating.

The main agenda would be on expected lines. The corporates would stress on tax reforms, cut in corporation tax, abolition of surcharges and dismantling of the fringe benefit tax (FBT), along with the widening of the tax net, expenditure control and bringing in more services under the tax net.Mr. Chidambaram, on his part, would emphasise on the need to garner greater resources to fund the various health, education, infrastructure and social sector schemes.

For greater synergy

As the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) continue to be one of the largest employment generators, the Finance Ministry would like to look for ways of injecting greater synergy between the small and medium industries to help them play a more dynamic role in the economy.

Other major issues pertaining to the booming stock market, the securities transaction tax as also the turnover tax are also likely to figure in the discussions.

On Tuesday, Mr. Chidambaram will meet leading agriculturalists to get inputs from the farming point of view. The Government is firm in its view that for achieving an overall GDP growth of over seven per cent annually, the farm growth rate would have to be stepped up from two to about four per cent.

The consultations with trade unions is scheduled for Thursday and those invited include the INTUC, the CITU, the BMS and the AITUC.

The subjects likely to figure in the discussions are labour reforms and theEPF interest rate. While the Centre is for a certain degree of flexibility in labour laws to ensure greater employment avenues, the unions see it as a "hire and fire" policy, which may lead to retrenchment.

The pre-budget consultations are to end on Friday with the meeting with economists wherein the discussions are expected to revolve round the fiscal and revenue deficits and the need to prune various subsidies that are not reaching the intended beneficiaries. Some of the economists invited for the meeting are Soumitra Choudhury, Member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, Ila Patnaik and Amitabh Bose.

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