Industry body, the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) has approached the government for incentives like a cut in excise duty, teaser loans for housing and interest subvention for exporters, saying that sectors like real estate, power, steel, gems and jewellery are in a real crisis. It has sought special dispensations for these industries for taking them out of stress.
The chamber pointed that the RBI did show a great courage and slashed the policy interest rates, which however, did not get transmitted to the borrowers, on earlier occasions. Between September 2014 and August , 2015 while the Repo rate got reduced by 75 basis points (before the latest 50 bps cut), the banks weighted average lending rate was marginally brought down to 11.93 per cent, just down 15 bps from 12.12 per cent. Certainly, the banks did not help the situation and some of these core employment generating industries slipped further into troubles because of lack of consumer demand, high interest costs and cheap imports.
The industry body has said that besides, the Reserve Bank of India , banks, states and the Central Government should move fast in taking the troubled power distribution companies (discoms) out of morass, or else they would become dead assets and big drags on the exchequer , causing big rise in the non-performing assets.
Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat has said that for creating additional demand, the government will have to chip in with rather bold measures and create extra elbowroom for select industries by extending short-term stimulus on construction materials like steel, cement, power equipment. He said that the RBI has correctly noticed, the average industry capacity utilization is 77 per cent. So, unless the C.U reaches at least 100 per cent, we cannot expect the investment cycle to revive even though interest rates have come down.
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