NEW DELHI, MAY 19: India Inc is expected to clock a healthy growth of 8-10 per cent in the current fiscal, says FICCI's quarterly business confidence survey. The business confidence index has improved by 1.5 points from 27.8 to 29.3 and the index has been on the rise for the last two surveys.Industrial outlook is relatively optimistic as 70 per cent of the respondents have predicted an industrial growth rate of 8-10 per cent for the current fiscal against 6-8 per cent projected in the last survey. More than 85 per cent of the respondents expect the GDP growth to be around 6-7 per cent against 5-6 per cent in the last survey. Almost 60 per cent of the respondents have projected the prime lending rate to remain around 10-12 per cent, inflation at 3-5 per cent and exchange rate at Rs 42-45.Corporate India continued to be upbeat about the stock markets with a majority saying that recent fall is only a technical correction and partially due to the slowdown trends in global stock markets. The survey says that fluctuations witnessed in the Indian bourses has been influenced by the fluctuations witnessed at Nasdaq.Around 77 per cent of the respondents expect the BSE-30 share sensex to remain around 5000 level against 5500 projected in the last survey.However, 72 per cent of the respondents have pegged the fiscal deficit between 6-7 per cent of the GDP. In last years survey, 64 per cent of the respondents had expressed their concern that fiscal deficit would be growing at this rate.The survey has called for a speedy clearance of long pending Patents Bill by the government or else the Indian industry is likely to be affected, especially in the areas of pharmaceuticals, food processing, high technology areas and R&D.The Ficci survey projects a 13 per cent jump in capacity utilisation to 83 per cent from 70 per cent projected in the last survey. Revenues are expected to grow by 19 per cent as compared to 14 per cent in the last years' confidence survey. Further, the profit too has been projected to improve by 14 per cent compared to 10 per cent projected in the last survey.As far as the broadening of the tax base is concerned, 88 per cent of the respondents felt that the time has come to broaden the tax base and feel that the government should move towards the objective since it has already started partially taxing the export earnings.Ficci quarterly business confidence survey conducted on 424 corporates has revealed a strong positive sentiment towards sustained macro-economic growth with 84 per cent of the respondents confident that policy measures announced by the government in the form of budget proposals, exim policy and liberalised investment policy would have a positive impact on the growth of the economy.However, on the impact of the exim policy, 24 per cent of the companies said they would be badly affected as a result of putting 714 items under open general license whereas 74 per cent were either not sure what impact the policy would have on their industry or they felt there would be no impact at all, the survey revealed.On whether the replacement of quantitative restrictions with tariff regime would be equally protective or not, 59 per cent of the respondents said that tariff regime would not be adequate while 38 per cent felt that this policy of protecting domestic industry would be effective.On privatisation of the banking sector, 51 per cent of the respondents were in favour but an overwhelming 72 per cent responded negatively to whether the move would serve any purpose if the public character of the banks were retained.
