“The heightened expectations from the Budget 2021 has been met with a matching delivery by the honorable FM. This is a Liberal and growth oriented budget, with no adverse tax rollouts. The budget has been well received by the Market participants as is also being demonstrated with the immediate positive response from the stock markets. However, There is a need for both short-term and long-term enablers for growth for businesses, as well as for the economy as a whole. India is a growing economy and our per capita energy consumption is expected to continue to rise at a rapid rate. Our 2020 oil import bill alone was about $ 100 billion, which is more than 4% of the annual GDP or seemingly almost equal to the annual fiscal deficit! While the Government continues to focus on promoting renewable sources of energy on the supply side, we still have a tremendous untapped opportunity for wide scale adoption of technology driven energy efficiency interventions, which can play an important role in managing the demand side. Reduction of energy consumption can directly contribute to the fiscal deficit targets in a meaningful way, while at the same time contributing to the long term social and environmental goals. We would like to see some more announcements in the future like incentives, promotions and awareness programs for the Corporate sector promoting direct adoption of energy efficiency investments, which may help unlock the Nation’s energy efficiency potentials.”
