The government should make some big bang announcements in the forthcoming budget for 2016-17 to resurrect investment in public projects, or else the economy can soon catch the Chinese flu with serious consequences, Assocham said on Wednesday."With major multilateral institutions like the IMF and big economies such as the US, Japan, Germany and the UK all betting high on India being saviour of the international economy, stakes are too high for us not to let them and ourselves down," apex industry body Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) president Sunil Kanoria said at a media conference. "While we are surely reaping the benefit of a big fall in oil prices, as much as 75 percent in the last 18-20 months, we have enough challenges in terms of checking capital outflows from the stock market, grappling with deflationary trends with a number of areas and a huge setback to the exports," said Kanoria.
He said although an Assocham Bizcon Survey has polled corporate India's views which expect things to improve in next two quarters "we cannot take it for granted and need to work really hard on all fronts".To my mind, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley should become much more upfront in re-capitalising the stress-ridden banks, find off-Budget financial models for funding big time infrastructure projects and give a boost to the crisis-hit rural economy. Besides, we have to raise substantially allocations for health and education, if we are serious about developing our human resource," the Assocham chief added.