BackBudget 2023-24: FM Nirmala Sitharaman chairs 1st pre-budget meeting with experts
The formal exercise to prepare the annual Budget for the next financial year -- FY2023-24 - commenced on 10 October
PremiumUnion Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday chaired her first pre-Budget meeting with the first group of captains from industries and experts in the field of infrastructure and climate change in Delhi.
The meeting was attended by Union Minister of State Finance Pankaj Chaudhary and Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad; Finance Secretary TV Somanathan, secretaries from other departments of the finance ministry, and the Chief Economic Advisor Anantha Nageswaran.
On November 22, FM Sitharaman will meet the agriculture and agro-processing industry, representatives from the financial sector, and the capital market. She will also be meeting the representatives of the services sector and trade bodies, besides experts from the social sector, including health, education, water, and sanitation, on November 24. The pre-budget meetings with the trade union representatives and economists are scheduled for November 28.
According to the PTI news agency, climate change would be one of the priority areas in the 2023-24 Budget making as India has pledged to become a net zero emitter of carbon by 2070.
The budget for the next year will have to address critical issues of high inflation, boosting demand, job creation, and putting the economy on a sustained 8%-plus growth path.
The Ministry of Finance had informed earlier that the meeting would chew over the allocation of funds for all categories of expenditures.
"Requirement of funds for all categories of expenditures along with receipts of Ministries/ Departments will be discussed during the pre-budget meetings," the Budget Division of the finance ministry had said.
The ministry will decide the final ceiling date by 10 January 2023 after an assessment of fiscal space. In financial parlance, the maximum permitted level in a financial transaction is called the ceiling.
Notably, it will be the last full Budget for Modi 2.0 government before the Lok Sabha elections to be held in April-May of 2024.
The Budget for 2023-24 is likely to be tabled on February 1.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government scrapped the colonial-era tradition of presenting the Budget at the end of February. The then finance minister Arun Jaitley had for the first time presented the annual accounts on February 1, 2017.
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