Pre Budget Expectation 2019: by Rajeev Kapur, Managing Director, Steelbird Helmets

India is a vast country with a population of 1.3 billion therefore India cannot survive with agriculture and service industry alone. We need to become an industrial hub. And to become an industrial hub the government should give a lot of benefits, subsidies and incentives to the industries based on all labour intensive units. Also to overcome the current problem of Chinese products flooding the Indian market we need to ensure that we start manufacturing locally. And this is exactly what the superpower countries are doing where India is lacking.

Furthermore, for each and every district the government should announce schemes so that every district can become a city. For that any plant which a particular company sets up in a district there should be no GST or income tax and they can also claim the GST input. This will facilitate double benefit. By claiming the GST input they can take credit, there will be no GST on the products and no income tax for a period of 10 years.

Moreover there should be slabs. For example if a company has over 1000 employees recruited then they should get 20% rebate in GST and income tax . Likewise above 2000 there should be a rebate of 40%, for over 3000 it should be 60%, above 4000 it should be kept 80% and for above 5000 the rebate should be 100% . This will help uplift all the rural areas and help them come at par with the metropolitan cities. It will make our country a manufacturing hub and bring down the crime rate as every individual will become productive.

As far as the helmet industry is concerned, GST shall not be levied on helmets as they are meant for safety. Helmets are life saving device just like medicines. Therefore, just the way there is no GST on medicines so shall helmets be exempted.

Moreover, unless helmets are exempted from taxes, prices will go up and the effort of the government to roll out the new ISI standard and mandatory use of ISI helmets will be defeated.

Therefore, helmets should not be treated like other commodities. Every day approximately 13 people die in road accidents. Many of these deaths happen because of no or poor quality of helmets. In a country where people consider helmets as a financial burden, a zero percent GST will help to win people’s faith in good quality helmets and will induce them to buy and understand its significance.”