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FY24 Budget To Be More Rural And Infra-Focused: UBS

The Swiss brokerage also has flat outlook for the markets with a forecast of zero gains in Nifty.

<div class="paragraphs"><p>(Source:&nbsp;Freepik)</p></div>
(Source: Freepik)

The forthcoming budget—the last full Budget of the present government ahead of the general elections to be held in mid-2024—will be more rural- and infra-focused, said a foreign brokerage.

The upcoming budget is likely to boost rural/agri spending by $10 billion— a growth of 15% over FY23—and maintain double-digit 20% growth in public capex over the current fiscal, given that the nation will be going to the polls in mid-2024, UBS India economist Tanvee Gupta Jain said in a note on Wednesday.

However, she noted that the government is unlikely to go beyond fiscal boundaries with its election-oriented budget and also expects the subsidy burden to ease significantly in FY24, creating more fiscal space to reallocate money towards existing rural schemes, including the rural jobs scheme MGNREGA, rural housing and roads, among others.

She also expects the economy to moderate further and pencils a GDP growth of only 5.5% for next fiscal, much lower than the consensus 6%, saying the slowing global growth and delayed impact of monetary tightening, coupled with the spillover effect of an expected global slowdown in this year.

However, she also said the country's structural growth story remained intact and therefore continued to expect the domestic economy to be able to maintain potential growth of 5.75-6.25% in the medium term, as she sees the government to continue with its push on capex, manufacturing and digitalisation.

On rupee, she said the depreciation pressure would ease before the local unit plumbing to 85 a U.S. dollar, somewhere in the first half of the year and then to recover and that the rupee will continue to underperform its emerging market peers. This will also have an impact on the bond prices, which may peak to 7.5% mid-year and then moderate to 7% by the end of the next fiscal.

The Swiss brokerage also has flat outlook for the markets with a forecast of zero gains in Nifty, citing the already expensive valuation.

"Receding household flows and high valuations may weigh on the market and we expect Nifty to deliver a Compounded Annual Growth Rate of around 10.5% over the next three years as against 11% over the past five years," said the report.

More than earnings, the brokerage said, the trajectory of the market will be influenced by valuations in the next 12 months.

With the pandemic-related excess savings unwinding and local bank deposit rates rising, household flows to market are showing early but clear signs of fatigue, said the brokerage and expected valuations to normalise with receding household flows.

Its 12-month Nifty target is at 18,000 with no upside from current levels and with target PE at 7% above the long-term average.

Gupta Jain expects Consumer Price based Inflation to moderate towards 5-5.5% in FY24 (from 6.6% in FY23) but to remain above RBI's medium-term target of 4% due to uncertainty regarding the food inflation outlook.

She expects the repo rate to peak at 6.5% by end-FY23 before easing to 6% by end-FY24.