National Chamber of Industries hails Budget 2015

Wednesday, 29 October 2014 00:21 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Ceylon National Chamber of Industries (CNCI) in a statement yesterday said that Budget 2015 emanates a message towards accelerated economic development with emphasis on continued infrastructure development, domestic production, education, agriculture and tourism. CNCI Chairman Gamini Gunasekera said that measures have been taken to maintain the budget deficit at 5% of GDP in 2014 and move towards further reducing to 4.6% in 2015, which will provide a conducive environment for businesses.

The proposal to provide lands on long term leases to set up 300 factories in every divisional secretary area and also provisions made to permit lump sum depreciation for the importation of plant and machinery in addition to exempting them from dividend tax and providing a half tax holiday for a period of three years will create a new wave of industrialisation resulting in new employment generation and increase in locally manufactured products for local and exports markets. The Budget proposal to set-up separate electricity tariff band for industries and services below 300 units a month offering 25% of tariff reductions will be a major boost for the SME sector and the cost reduction will encourage their economic activities. Further, proposal of tariff reduction of 15% for all other industries would create a competitive advantage for the local industries in order to compete in local as well as foreign markets. CNCI praised the decision to present the anti-dumping legislation before Parliament shortly, which will protect the local industries from unfair competition in the market due to unethical business practices such as under invoicing and dumping. The Government in the last Budget set up women enterprise credit scheme to provide working capital loans up to Rs. 250,000 for 25 women entrepreneurs to each Divisional Secretariat without requiring any security. This facility has been extended to a further 25 women entrepreneurs each year, during 2015-2017.This will give tremendous encouragement for women to embark on small businesses. What is required at the beginning of a new chapter in the economic development of the country is a firm assurance from the Government that this will be the direction in which the Government will move in the years to come and the investors could confidentially make long-term investments, Gunasekera said.