This year's budget has primarily focused on three key sectors namely agriculture, healthcare and infrastructure. The proposed plan of the government to provide 10 crore poor and under-privileged people with a medical treatment coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh is indeed a laudable step which will alleviate the problem of the poor to a very large extent as healthcare has always been a problem for most of the population.

When the general election is just a year away and there are telltale signs of rural distress from certain pockets, it is logical that the budget would try and address the concerns of the rural sector. A wide array of steps has been announced ranging from enhanced MSP for kharif crops, upgradation of Rural Haat-s to enable small and marginal farmers to sell directly to bulk purchasers and consumers, expansion of rural infrastructure, enhanced outlay for irrigation and adoption of cluster model for horticulture. All these augur well for the rural sector.

In addition, the allocation of funds for fishery, aquaculture, animal husbandry, dairy farming, agro-logistics services, extension of crop loans to lessee cultivators and schemes like the National Bamboo Mission can fuel entrepreneurship at the rural level.

I welcome the setting up of an Agri-Market Infrastructure Fund with a corpus of Rs 2,000 crore. The decision to set up 42 mega food parks can provide fillip to the agro-processing industries. However, there is not much clarity on how the government intends to build those - on its own or in collaboration with the private sector.

In the infrastructure sector, two areas of focus have been roads and railways. The envisaged investment of Rs 5.35 lakh crore (for Phase I of Bharatmala programme) for roads and capex of Rs 1.46 lakh crore for railways will assist in providing the momentum to the economy.

It will also result in growth for construction equipment manufacturing companies, construction companies and contractors and infrastructure financing institutions involved in supporting these sectors. Overall, it will have a tremendous boost on employment generation as construction happens to be the second largest employment generator after agriculture.

Another laudable step taken by the government is to develop the corporate bond market and the amendments proposed in the stamp duty structure.

It is quite important to develop the capital market which has been our request for the last few years in order to bring more depth into the debt capital market. There are certain steps to be taken so that the conceptual thinking of the government can be converted into implementable actions.

One of the most important areas to be addressed is to enable, facilitate and encourage pension funds, provident funds and insurance companies to invest in bonds issued by infrastructure companies even if those bonds are investment grade and not fall in the category preferred by these fund repositories.

The introduction of the tax on long-term capital gains could have been delayed by another few years, especially keeping in mind that the equity capital market is the only option for many companies for mobilising resources as the banks are presently shy to lend to manufacturing and infrastructure companies.

This would surely dampen the buoyant investment spirit which has been prevailing.

Kanoria is chairman and managing director Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd