Mumbai : With the retail business getting more competitive, experts are hoping that the upcoming general budget will help in reducing prices of the products that will help in making them more affordable for the consumers.
According to Harminder Singh of the Wazir Advisors, a well known consultancy firm in the retail sector, there can be various ways of doing this, like increasing the tax exemption limit for consumers and reducing taxes on fuel. “Such steps will be useful in increasing the purchasing power of people and generally give a boost to the retail sector,” he said.
Having more fdi in this sector will further help to reduce prices, Singh said. “Even the fact that the space used by the retail sector is currently treated as commercial area should be treated as consumer space and hence have lower taxes,” he said. This will help to open more stores in various cities and towns and in turn help in the growth of this sector. Retail sources said that this industry is currently valued at about $ 600 million and is slated to increase to about $ 1.3 trillion by the year 2020. This sector remains one of the fastest growing areas of the industry and is expanding at a CAGR of about 19-20 percent. Kumar Rajgopalan from the Retail Association of India said that there has been a huge amount of growth in the e-commerce area and which is due to the lower rates of the products.