I wish Mint team to talk to SOS Children’s Villages of India, world’s largest NGO dedicated to providing long term family care to orphan children for expectations from coming budget.

Please do let me know if you wish to talk to the spokesperson of SOS Children’s Villages of India or you require any further information on the NGO.

regards

Healthcare sector needs urgent reforms

- Vishal Bali

India has 16% of the world’s population ,18% of the world’s mortality, 20% of the worlds morbidity and healthcare expenditure in the country is a miniscule 1% of Global expenditure.As one of the fastest growing economy’s in the world we cannot afford to rank 171 out of 175 amongst countries surveyed by WHO in terms of percentage of GDP spent in public sector on healthcare. In the same survey India ranks 17th in terms of private sector spending on health which now contributes 4.3% of the GDP spent on healthcare in the country.Amongst the BRIC countries India ranks the lowest with a 5.2% of GDP spent on healthcare while Brazil spends 7.6%,Russia 6.1% and China 5.4%.

It is therefore time that India drives its economy on the fundamentals of growth in the healthcare sector and Budget 2009 should provide the necessary impetus for this growth.

- Give Infrastructure or National Priority sector status to the sector to support and improve the overall investment in the sector both at the urban and rural level.

- Govt spending on healthcare must increase to 2% of GDP from the current 0.9% to provide higher outlay for healthcare infrastructure expansion and provision.Public and Private healthcare combined spending should target 7% of GDP

- Reallocation of resources of Govt spending on healthcare, higher outlay towards health insurance coverage schemes to widen affordability and accessibility.

- A National Disease Surveillance Authority to be set up under the Ministry Of Health to consistently map,monitor and survey the prevalence of disease segments amongst the population in the country.

- Provide immediate impetus to grow the health insurance sector.Table and pass the Insurance reform bill to increase FDI in health insurance cos; to 49%. Move towards compulsory health insurance coverage.

- Introduce Healthcare Investment Zones to provide Medical Technology cos; and consumable manufacturers subsidized real estate and 10 year tax holiday to help local growth of this industry.

- Introduce a Wellness Tax Incentive for employers towards implementation of preventive and wellness initiatives for employees and their families.

- Reform Medical Education system to enable higher private sector participation.

As A FM my first priority will be foccus towards the basic needs of modern day society.
1. Primary education with focus on rural and sub urban areas.
2.The second most important thing would be to provide affordable and good health related services to all the people of india
3. Invest in infrastructure and try to attract not only foreign investors but also encourage our domestic investors to build high hopes on india
4. Would really try to promote a very strong judicial body both for the corporate world and normal citizens because until we can’t strengthen our work environment we won’t be any way near to become a developed economy.
5. a very important move would be to intensively monitor and control wheher the imlementation levels of the govt plans are high or not.
6 There are still so many things that I can discuss but one most important thing that I will also focus on will be the Banking and Financial sector. Being a backbone sector of any economy as a FM my primary objective would be to continuously be in touch with the banking exectives and take all the possible measures to maintain a good and healthy credt market for more consumption, however keping the inflation factor into consideration which is poised to be a big threat by this fiscal yr end.
7. and last but not least Controlling fiscal deficit in the long and medium term would be of great importance because it severely affects the liberty of the govt to focus on rural spending, and probably the best way would be disinvestment and also effective and maximum utilization of resources.
8. TAX framework is also that the govt should analyse.

Charu Sharma

No increase in taxes except on products like tobacco, alcohol, automobiles, high end fashion and luxury products.
Zero tax on medicines, health care instruments, education and food.

All public service organisations must declare dividents and made accountable to the citizens through reforms and modernisation. We have to make quality health care and education accessible and affordable to all.
Tax incentives should be given to all industries established in rural India and should be a single window process for seeking registration and financial support.

We also suggest that a special fund should be created for all such individual tax payers who would have paid taxes for more than 30 years to be recognised and provided with old age support towards free housing, food and health care, in case of old age sustainability and livelihood.

All goods manufactured or imported should have excise and import duties respectively and heavy penalties should be imposed on tax evasion and counterfeit goods.

All taxes on goods and services within the States should be uniform and made simple in terms of collection and assessment processess.

The budget in brief should be simple, comprehensive and citizen-friendly with high degree of accountability and transparency in collection of taxes, public services and Government expenditures. collections through rational use of technological processes and systems. The consumer groups will be most happy to see competition at the marketplace with strong regulatory mechanisms to ensure fair business practices and real value for money”.

Bejon Misra

If I were FM, I will allocate more funds to infrastructure followed by agriculture, health and education sectors. Government funding in infra is badly needed at this juncture to create more employment opportunites. Job creation will automatically takes care of recession i.e. people’s purchasing power will go up and sectors like housing/automobiles/retail will be revived.

I will maintain equilibirum between growth and reduction of fiscal deficit. I will pursue with the help of my cabinet collegues for divestment of government’s stake in PSUs.