Choosing the long view

Ashima Goyal
The first Budget of the new government in the 17th Lok Sabha powerfully recommits to the vision guiding the last term emphasising continuity, individual empowerment and infrastructure for nation building, fiscal consolidation, discipline, and process improvements. The rural sector comes in for special attention, but even there the focus is on value addition and transformation rather than income transfers as the means to double farmer incomes.
Jarring note
But in choosing the long view, there is hardly any discussion of the current growth slowdown, and how the Budget can contribute to alleviating it. This is a pity, because this is expected of the major macroeconomic policy statement of the government. Markets are looking for a big spending boost from the government to revive growth. But there are many aspects of the Budget that will contribute to reviving growth but unfortunately they are not brought out explicitly. The Budget is presented as part of the longer-term creation of a new India. The standard idea of macroeconomic stimulus is to announce a large increase in government spending without raising taxes. This raises deficits. There has been an active debate in the run-up to the Budget that given the slowdown some rise in deficits is acceptable in order to provide a boost to the economy. But the government is committed to a long-term macroeconomic framework and a path of deficit reduction. A deviation will hurt its credibility. As we see below, there are other ways of stimulating the economy. Moreover forward-looking agents know short-term indulgence comes at the expense of long-term pain. They are likely to become more confident and spend more with a government that is able to keep its word. India has had a long battle to escape from macroeconomic fragility and high inflation due to over spending and over stimulus by past governments.
Macroeconomic stimulus
The Budget gives many examples of this government’s faster speed of delivery in infrastructure, such as road building or construction of low-income housing. Since the same government is back, it will be able to front-load expenditure on ready projects. The spending comes before taxes are raised and, therefore, is stimulatory. Apart from creating incomes it boosts demand for the cement and steel industries. Moreover, although the fiscal deficit ratio has come down from 3.4 in the interim Budget to 3.3, a larger share of resources are to be raised by privatisation. Since this does not reduce private demand as taxation does, there is a larger net expenditure stimulus which supports demand and growth. Completed schemes are being built upon, as some funds from Swachh Bharat are being re-allocated to piped water and to obtaining energy from solid waste management. The substitution of LED bulbs under the Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA) Yojana for earlier energy guzzlers led to an estimated cost saving of ?18,341 crore per year. Now solar stoves and battery chargers will be promoted. Faster privatisation as well as monetisation of other assets such as brown field projects and government land banks will encourage private activity. The ?70,000 crore to be pumped into public sector banks coming after the asset clean-up has started yielding results, together with a series of measures for non banking financial companies (NBFC) will help credit growth.
A climate of pessimism and fear was responsible for falling credit growth, which fed into a slowdown in private investment and consumption. The Government’s role is to bolster confidence. As a confident state steps in, begins to spend, and turns around the financial sector, private spending will also revive. Private investment projects had started in end-2017 as some sectors were running into capacity constraints, and then dried up because of the NBFC credit slowdown and election-related political uncertainty. It should revive again, especially since interest rates are coming down. G-Secs rates have fallen after the Budget. Spreads for corporate bonds and NBFC funds should also come down. Many NBFCs continue to have viable business models. The fear of credit risk will fade as costs come down and activity revives. The moribund real estate market that is responsible for much destruction of asset value will get a fillip from tax exemptions and lower interest rates.
Help is promised for industry in many other ways. Land availability, labour law simplification, reduction in legal costs, delays and tax harassment. The focus on public-private partnerships and support for entrepreneurship will create many opportunities for industry. Private firms generally do much better in last mile delivery of public services. Cuts in corporate taxes, other sops and tweaks in tariffs are well-thought-out to attract foreign firms to produce at scale in India. This is the right time for such initiatives in the context of foreign direct investment re-locating from China.
One of the strengths of the last government was in process improvements. These continue in this Budget. A new initiative of faceless e-assessment with no human interface, and cases assigned in random manner will reduce tax payer harassment. Integrated information will be used to auto fill tax forms making compliance easier even as tax evasion becomes more difficult. There is more simplification in Goods and Services Tax and other taxes while information will be used more intensively to increase the tax base.
The improvement in processes reflects in better delivery of Budget promises, and the quality of fiscal consolidation. The revenue deficit has fallen as well as the fiscal deficit even as expenditure promises were largely kept, although much more was spent for agriculture. Capital expenditure was supported by market borrowing of public sector enterprises (PSEs) — as they become commercially viable, they must borrow based on future income streams. The growth slowdown would have been worse last year without this borrowing. PSEs do not suffer from credit risk. The food subsidy from the Food Corporation of India — which last year was supported by borrowing from small savings — is now brought back to the Budget as it should be.
Apart from reforms in budget processes there is support for larger reform processes. The emphasis on technology cannot deliver alone without improvement in governance. But there is evidence of complementary action on both. For example, a major handicap for small businesses is an absence of timely payments from government. A payment platform has been announced for cutting time and improving processes. Ministries dealing with water have been merged.
A major constraint India has been facing is the absence of long-term funding for infrastructure. There is evidence of innovative thinking on this with sops announced for alternate investment funds; thinking about setting up a development bank as well for making more foreign savings available. Retail investors are also to be encouraged to buy government securities. Stock exchanges are building platforms, which are to be supported by inter-operability between the Securities and Exchange Board of India and the Reserve Bank of India depositories. To the extent there are large diversified domestic investors in government securities the proposal to also raise funds abroad becomes less risky.
As these reforms improve the supply-side, cost and time delays reduce for business as well as for the average citizen.
Long-term framework
As argued above, some stimulus is possible without raising deficits. In the long run, however, the macroeconomic framework constraining the Budget needs to be revisited to allow policy to counter growth slowdowns and booms. The present framework gives very little space for this. The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management adjustment path should be in terms of a cyclically adjusted fiscal deficit, with incentives to protect the quality of expenditure. A target for revenue deficit is also required since it is easiest to cut public investment, which also hurts growth. The 15th Finance Commission should consider this reset.
Reducing the level of debt and interest payments is a desirable objective, since it would release much more government funds for productive expenditure. But growth raises tax revenues and a rise in GDP increases the denominator reducing deficit ratios. Therefore maintaining growth is one of the best ways to reduce debt and deficit ratios.
Ashima Goyal is on the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council
Courtesy The Hindu