Evok wants Budget to be retail friendly

D K Jairath, CEO, Evok speaks about his expectations from the Union Budget from a retail point of view and says he is looking forward to some key initiatives to help revive consumer/retailer confidence, open up growth engines and facilitate the retail sector with critical linkages to country GDP and its socio-economic growth/progress. Jairath wants the government to:

• Open up FDI in multi-brand retail, and to start with, the non-food sector can be opened up in this budget itself

• Provide preferred-sector status to retail and thereby facilitate lower cost credit flows for overall growth and fast-paced development

• Rationalise the complex taxation structure

• Reduce the import duties considering high product import dependencies in retail and eliminate the unjustified levy of service tax on rent applicable

• Remove infrastructural bottlenecks in availability and fast-development of retail and warehousing real estate in terms of easy availability and right costs

• Introduce GST uniformly across the country with immediate effect, thereby rationalising the taxation structures across states, removing inter-state anomalies and creating large border-less markets with reduced complexity and enhancing critical supply chain operating efficiencies

• Remove red-tapism and complex multi-window procedures and licenses/approvals for establishing and running retail stores and establishments across the country and replace it with a simplistic single-window fast-paced accountable system for securing approvals while retaining necessary compliances

• Create industry-partnership and PPP models for retail education and skill development facilities

• To meet the demands for growth and expertise, government aided initiatives and policies to foster and produce retail professionals are very critical