A tight fiscal deficit, minimal freebies and high capital expenditure are on the wishlist of Ashish Bhandari, the managing director and chief executive officer of Thermax Ltd., from the upcoming Union Budget for financial year 2025-26.
The budget, to be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Feb. 1, comes amid concerns over slowdown in urban consumption and restricted growth in corporate earnings.
Talking to NDTV Profit, Bhandari said that he is not expecting “too many big bang moves” from the budget this year.
“In the last few budgets, the finance minister has been pretty consistent," he said, adding that the government is expected to continue with practical decisions. "The moves will be a lot more consistent.”
The first thing to look out for in the budget, according to the Thermax CEO, is keeping the fiscal deficit tight to combat inflation.
For fiscal 2025, the fiscal deficit target was set at 4.9% of the gross domestic product. In the next financial year, ending March 2026, the government aims to bring down the deficit to 4.5% of the GDP, according to a finance ministry document released last month.
According to Bhandari, the second key thing to watch out is capex. "Keep government capex high. I think this is something that has been happening for a few years. Post-budget (last year), we saw a bit of a slowdown, but we would expect the government to keep spending the way it has. The government is earning well through GST and other receipts,” he added.
“The third thing I would say is that freebies should be minimum," he said, adding that the focus should be on "smart expenditure, which ultimately keeps inflation low, and stimulates capex.”
On the green energy front, Thermax will be expecting three things from the budget, Bhandari mentioned. “The first is green hydrogen, for which a lot of policy decisions have been announced. We would like to see that defined a lot more clearly with very specific budgets for green hydrogen,” he said.
The company will also keenly observe any announcements to be made for bio-compressed natural gas, according to Bhandari. Bio-CNG is seen as holding the potential to replace natural gas in various applications.
Thermax will also be looking at the budget for a "general framework on green financing", he added.
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