Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, flanked by her deputy Anurag Thakur (to her right) and a team of officials, shows a folder containing the Union Budget documents as she arrives at Parliament
Facing one of the steepest slides in growth and just into the first year of its second term, the NDA-2 government decided to play safe when it came to imparting a positive impulse to the economy.
Union Budget 2020-21, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman Saturday, carried a visible imprint of the Prime Minister’s fiscal conservatism, inasmuch as it kept a tight leash on expenditure, tacitly admitting there was little headroom for higher spending. In doing so, however, the Budget reconciled to a new normal of sub-par growth, almost conceding it was unable to do the heavy lifting, particularly at a time when private investment has failed to revive, consumption has collapsed, and exports have shown no signs of a pick-up. For 2020-21, it projected a nominal growth rate of 10 per cent. Sitharaman’s only significant intervention related to the overhaul of the personal income tax structure.
[“source=indianexpress”]