Finance Minister presents Union Budget 2022 amid opposition taunts, applause from treasury benches

New Delhi, Feb. 1 (PTI): Lok Sabha members heard Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s 90-minute budget speech in rapt attention, barring the occasional remarks by opposition members and regular applause from the treasury benches.

Keeping in line with changing times, Sitharaman read out the speech from a ‘Made in India’ tablet personal computer which she carried in a red cover with the National Emblem embossed on it, instead of a brief case or ‘Bahi Khata’.

As Sitharaman walked into the Lok Sabha chamber, women ministers Shobha Karandlaje and Darshana Jardosh and member from Madhya Pradesh Riti Pathak were seen greeting her, while Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw gave her a thumbs up.

With Covid pandemic guidelines in force, members were seated in the chambers of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Most of the members, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were seen wearing face masks. However, members had crowded the Lok Sabha chamber, while hardly a handful of others, including union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Piyush Goyal, were seen seated in the Rajya Sabha chamber.

Members from the treasury benches greeted Modi as he entered the Lok Sabha chamber with chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’, ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, and ‘Har, Har Mahadev’. A BJP member was heard asking about Rahul Gandhi.

Gandhi, a Lok Sabha member from Wayanad was seated in his usual seat in the second row, engrossed all the time in his tablet PC.

Trinamool member Saugata Roy and DMK member Dayanidhi Maran were heard criticising the allocation made for setting up an international arbitration centre at GIFT city. “Is this Union Budget or Gujarat Budget? This is good only for Gujarat,” Roy and Maran were heard as saying.

The duo also demanded greater allocation for states from the GST collections when the finance minister mentioned gross GST collection of INR 1.40 lakh crore for January 2022.

Opposition members demanded allocation of 5G spectrum to BSNL, when Sitharaman mention that the government planned to auction 5G spectrum in the next financial year.

Congress members protested the announcements related to strategic sale of Air India and Neelanchal Ispat Nigam Limited and the planned IPO of Life Insurance Corporation.

“It is a sell-off of institutions,” Congress member T N Prathapan was heard saying.

Several members were dismayed at the non-availability of the hard copies of the Budget Speech of the Finance Minister. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said the speech copies would be available after the presentation of the Budget.

Power Minister R K Singh was seen ensuring that Sitharaman had her supply of lemonade, which she sipped at regular intervals, during her address.

India’s fiscal deficit pegged slightly higher at 6.9% in FY22

The country’s fiscal deficit is projected to be higher at 6.9 per cent this fiscal as against 6.8 per cent estimated earlier, with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman emphasising the need for stronger and sustainable growth through public investment.

The marginal rise in fiscal deficit for the current fiscal is against the expectations of the market and experts who expected slight decline in the numbers on the back rising tax collections.

“The fiscal deficit in 2022-23 is estimated at 6.4 per cent of GDP, which is consistent with the broad path of fiscal consolidation announced by me last year to reach a fiscal deficit level below 4.5 per cent by 2025-26. While setting the fiscal deficit level in 2022-23, I am conscious of the need to nurture growth, through public investment, to become stronger and sustainable,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the Union Budget 2022-23 in Parliament, said on Tuesday.

Further, she said, the revised fiscal deficit, the gap between expenditure and revenue, in the current year, is estimated at 6.9 per cent of GDP as against 6.8 per cent projected in the Budget Estimates previously.

The fiscal deficit of the government for 2022-23 is estimated to be INR 16,61,196 crore. The Revised Estimates for 2021-22 indicate a fiscal deficit of INR 15,91,089 crore as against the Budget Estimates of INR 15,06,812 crore.

The Finance Minister stated that the outlay for capital expenditure in the Union Budget is once again being stepped up sharply by 35.4 per cent from INR 5.54 lakh crore in the current year to INR 7.50 lakh crore in 2022-23.

With capital expenditure taken together with provision made for creation of capital assets through Grants-In-Aid to States, the ‘Effective Capital Expenditure’ of the central government is estimated at INR 10.68 lakh crore in 2022-23, which will be 4.1 per cent of GDP, she said.

The total expenditure in 2022-23 is estimated at INR 39.45 lakh crore, while the total receipts other than borrowings are estimated at INR 22.84 lakh crore.

She further said that as against a total expenditure of INR 34.83 lakh crore projected in the Budget Estimates 2021-22, the Revised Estimates are INR 37.70 lakh crore.