Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to achieve a milestone by delivering her sixth consecutive budget presentation comprising five annual budgets and an interim budget. This achievement reflects the historic achievement of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai.
budget 2024 date
With the presentation of the interim budget on February 1, Sitharaman will surpass the record of her predecessors such as Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha, who had presented five consecutive budgets. As Finance Minister, Desai presented five annual budgets and one interim budget between 1959–1964.
After the Modi government came to power in 2014, Arun Jaitley took charge of the Finance Ministry and presented five consecutive budgets from 2014–15 to 2018–19.
It was in 2017, when Jaitley abandoned the colonial-era tradition of presenting the Budget on the 1st of the last working day of February.
Piyush Goyal, who is holding additional charge of the ministry due to Jaitley’s ill health, presented the interim budget for 2019–20 on February 1, 2019. Goyal had increased the standard deduction for salaried taxpayers from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000. Also, the tax exemption for taxpayers whose annual taxable income does not exceed Rs 5 lakh was increased from Rs 2,500 to Rs 12,500.
After the 2019 general elections, in the Modi 2.0 government, Sitharaman was given the charge of the finance portfolio. She became the second woman to present the budget after Indira Gandhi, who presented the budget for the financial year 1970–71.
That year, Sitharaman did away with the traditional budget briefcase and instead adopted a ‘bahi-khata’ with the national emblem to carry speeches and other documents.
Under Sitharaman, India has responded to the Covid pandemic with a series of pro-poor policy measures announced and continued its tag of fastest growing major economy and ‘bright spot’ in the world economy.
India is in the race to become a US$ 5 trillion economy by 2027-28 and a US$ 30 trillion economy by 2047.
Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who has the tag of presenting 10 budgets – the maximum by any finance minister – had presented six consecutive budgets, including an interim one.
The first budget of independent India was presented by the first Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Shetty.
Sitharaman, who will present her sixth consecutive budget, is expected to take some measures to boost the rural sector especially as the growth rate of the agriculture sector is projected to decline from 4 per cent to 1.8 per cent in 2023-24. , in the last year.
interim budget 2024
The interim Budget 2024-25 to be presented by Sitharaman on February 1 will be a vote-on-account that will empower the government to spend certain amounts of money until a new government is in place after the April-May general elections.
Since parliamentary elections are about to be held, there may not be any major policy changes in Sitharaman’s interim budget.
Speaking at an industry event last month, Sitharaman had ruled out any “grand announcement” in the interim budget, saying it would just be vote-on-account before the general elections.
The Vote on Account, once approved by Parliament, will authorize the government to withdraw money from the Consolidated Fund of India on a proportionate basis to meet the expenditure for the April–July period.
The new government, which is likely to be formed around June, will come up with the final budget for 2024-25 sometime in July.
Generally, the interim budget does not contain major policy announcements, but that does not stop the government from taking necessary steps to deal with the pressing issues facing the economy.
In the last interim budget for FY 2019-20, while the overall tax structure remained unchanged, there were some specific tax exemptions and standard deduction concessions.
(With PTI inputs)
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