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It is quite a disappointing Budget for the pharmaceuticals and chemicals industries as we expected the Government to provide stimulus to industry and ensure its healthy growth.

On the contrary, with no real sops to talk about, the Budget has only added to industry woes by increasing the minimum alternative tax to 15 per cent of book profits from 10 per cent, which puts additional pressure on the industry.

We can see some thought in the initiative related to weighted deduction of 150 per cent on expenditure incurred on in-house R&D to manufacturing businesses. For a company like ours, that makes heavy expenditure on R&D, this can surely help in increasing the profits.

The only other notable thing is that the Customs duty on 10 specified life-saving drugs/vaccine and their bulk drugs is reduced from 10 per cent to 5 per cent with nil CVD (by way of excise duty exemption).

This move will help improve upon export competitiveness and profits of pharma companies.

Abolishing the fringe benefit tax will also help reduce the tax liability of companies across different industries.

R.K. Thukral,

Executive Director,

IOL Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd

More Stories on : Budget | Pharmaceuticals

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