The Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee today announced Union Budget 2012-13, which was said to be disappointed to most of the counters. The FM rose the services tax and excise duty to 12 per cent from 10 per cent, which is going to affect many items. Corporate tax left unchanged while import duty on gold bars and platinum and excise duty on cigarettes, bidis, pan masala and chewing tobacco were raised.
According to market participants there was big hopes from FM from the Budget to give something positives on subsidy cuts, lowering expenditure, improving capital investments, lowering inflation and a roadmap on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Direct Tax Code (DTC), but there was only few steps were taken.
The Bombay Stock Exchange 30-share barometer gyrated erratically in a range of 17,871.00 and 17,426.58 in line with positive as well as negative news from the Union Budget. Finally, it closed by by 209.65 points or 1.19 per cent on heavy fag-end selling to settle at 17,466.20. The wide-based NSE Nifty also plunged by 62.60 points or 1.16 per cent to 5,317.90.