A Quick View of Budget 2024-25
Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman presented her interim budget in the Lok Sabha. It was completely devoid of any populism or grand declarations of any sorts. It was expected and obvious. Modi government is very confident to come back and they don’t want to put any burden on themselves by pledging promises which would be difficult to keep.
Modi will fight election more on emotional and political issues, rather than economic.
Nirmala Sitharaman presented actual figures of receipt and expenditure for the current year and calculated a deficit of 5.1% of GDP. This may be termed as manageable though it is nearly 1% more than what it was in 2014. She announced schemes for the farmers for getting loans. The critics may find that the percentage of collection of taxes from rich people through corporate tax is declining, while the contribution of common man through taxes is increasing. There was no mention of alarming situation of unemployment, especially unemployment of the graduates. India is slowly slipping on taking advantage of its demographic dividends. The private investment is not picking-up for the last several years in a row, even though government has more than compensated it by its own capital expenditure. There is impressive expenditure in rail, road, and aviation sectors. India is seriously trying to improve ports and their connectivity.
Nirmala Sitharaman compared some points of the budget of Oh yeah, unemployment 2014 with 2024 and gave a summary of the last 10 years. She loftily declared that 25 crore people have been brought out of the multidimensional poverty. She took pride that in a world where inflation is high, interest rates are high, and growth rates are lower, India has still managed to grow at 7 or more percentage.
She promised to present the full budget in July.
