Cement production would have shrunk in the March quarter primarily due to the base effect coupled with the note-ban-induced cash crunch and polls in many states during the period, says a report.

Gateway Distriparks Limited has announced that the fifth rail-linked container terminal of its subsidiary, Gateway Rail Freight Limited at Viramgam near Ahmedabad has been notified by Western Railway for handling container traffic. The terminal will be a double stack switching hub for the company on the North-West trade route.

CRISIL Research estimates that the first 75 operational highway projects tendered under the toll-operate-toll (TOT) model may fetch around Rs 40,000 crore, much lower than what the government had initially estimated.

JNPT’s (Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust) latest plan of tender calling out on last Friday to all Container Freight Stations (CFS) operators could prove to be a respite for businesses that suffered an initial hit from the Modi government’ latest initiative — Direct Port Delivery (DPD). The new plan offers CFS operators to bid directly to operate under the new regime.

The new aviation policy has brought in a lot of forward-looking changes to boost the slumping aviation industry; these changes have been made to make the industry more dynamic and lucrative for all the players and to level the playing field. One of the major changes which have been welcomed by the smaller airlines is that, prior to the policy change, an airline needed to have 20 planes and five years of local operations to fly overseas.

Airports are the next infrastructural buzzword that will be the game-changer in India´s developmental leap. This buzzword is expected to be exploited using existing growth drivers like exponential growth in passenger traffic and incremental cargo volumes over the next decade.

The reactions are positive and industry is also quite optimistic on the introduction of NCAP 2016. The objective of the government through NCAP is to establish an integrated ecosystem enabling significant growth of the civil aviation sector, which in turn would promote tourism, increase employment and lead to balanced regional growth.

The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is in itself a path-breaking fiscal reform. Corporate tax and other indirect taxes may be revamped keeping in view GST requirement.

The Budget is likely to continue its pro-poor image with a slew of concessions for agriculture, skilled labour and the rural sector, along with incentivisation to move to a digital payment economy. Employment-related incentives are likely to go up considerably.