Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will most likely present the Union Budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year in the last week of July, reported PTI. It is likely that the finance minister will hold a pre-budget consultations with industry chambers on June 20, sources told PTI on Sunday.
Industry sources said the pre-budget consultation with Sitharaman would be preceded by a meeting with Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra on June 18. The 2024-25 Budget is likely to lay out Modi 3.0 government’s economic agenda.
The finance minister will have to look at measures to boost growth without hurting inflation and look for resources to meet the coalition government’s compulsion. The economic agenda would include steps to fast-rack reforms to make India a USD 5-trillion economy in the near future and turn the country into a ‘Viksit Bharat’ by 2047.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) estimated that the Indian economy is projected to grow 7.2 per cent in the current fiscal on the back of improving rural demand and moderating inflation. The announcement regarding the Budget 2024 comes after RBI announced its highest-ever dividend of ₹2.11 lakh crore for FY24.
The key policy priorities for the third term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government would include dealing with stress in the agriculture sector, job creation, sustaining capex momentum, and pushing revenue growth to stay on the fiscal consolidation path.
Nirmala Sitharaman is set to present her seventh budget in a row. With this, the finance minister is set to surpass Morarji Desai’s record. Desai, as India’s finance minister six decades ago, presented six consecutive budgets.
Till now, Sitharaman has presented six budgets during her five-year term as the finance minister, including the interim budget 2024 earlier this year. She is also the only woman finance minister to serve two terms consecutively.
In the interim Budget 2024, the Centre raised the capital expenditure target by 11.1 percent to ₹11.11 lakh crore for the fiscal year starting on April 1, accounting for 3.4 percent of the country’s GDP.
(With inputs from PTI)