Madhur Bajaj, Chairman, MCCIA, said, “Instead of waiving off the loans completely, the government could have declared a moratorium on all farm loans for a few years. Now, it creates a situation where the honest businessman gets discouraged.”

Some officials felt that there is a ‘disconnect in the numbers’ laid out by the Finance Minister regarding the loan waiver and pointed out that ‘structural changes’ were missing. If this move were to lead to banks shying away from extending fresh loans to the farm sector, the farmers may have to once again turn to private moneylenders.

Questions were also raised about how the funding for the loan waiver, which could put pressure on the economy and increase inflation, would be arranged.

On the bright side, the irrigation and water resources finance corporation, with an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore, was deemed as welcome move. “The impetus provided to irrigation is laudable,” said Uday Borawake, chairman, agriculture and agri-business sub-committee, MCCIA.

While the Rs. 34, 400 crore allotment for education and the three new IITs in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan were welcome, what got the city-dwellers excited was the Rs 5-crore grant to the Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute in Pune. However, MCCIA officials said they were disappointed that the long-standing demand for an IIM in Pune has been ignored yet again.

Deepak Shikarpur, chairman of the IT subcommittee, MCCIA, and IT applications of Computer Society of India, said the budget was “very disappointing” for the IT industry. “The budget did not fulfill our expectations. There are no concessions in fringe benefit taxes as was expected. This budget is bad news for the small and medium-sized IT companies,” he said. Anant Sardeshmukh, Additional Director-General, MCCIA, agreed: “The tax holiday for the IT sector has not been extended, which is a negative.”

On the other hand, the automotive sector, which is also a ‘happening’ segment in Pune, had something to cheer about. According to Sardeshmukh, “With the reduction in excise duties on small cars from 16 per cent to 12 percent, the auto industry has got a huge fillip. Especially the two-wheeler industry, which has been going through tough times recently.”

Regarding the defence sector, Economic Adviser to the MCCIA Manasi Phadke said that whenever defence allocation increases, Pune benefits. “With the allocation for defence being increased by 10 per cent, pushing it above Rs one lakh crore, local small and medium sector units have reason to celebrate.”

Sardeshmukh, however, had a different take. “There are a lot of small and medium enterprises in Pune that manufacture electronic components for the defence department. These will benefit, but only if the defence outlay includes equipment upgradation,” he said.

Lakshmi Narayanan, vice chairman, Cognizant, also felt that the tax holiday under the STPI scheme should have been extended beyond March 31, 2009. “It would have been a big shot in the arm for the industry, primarily because the IT industry has been consistently ploughing its earnings back into the business, resulting in higher investment and growth,” he said .