Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman talks to NDTV Profit's Sanjay Pugalia (Source: NDTV Profit)
2 years ago
Feb 02, 2024
Private companies are participating in sectors allied to infrastructure, says FM Sitharaman. We also give states funds expecting them to spend on capex, she says.
The current economic growth is sustained and structural, says FM Sitharaman, adding that only the first two years after Covid-19 were the recovery phase.
Government is up for spending on the welfare of the people, says FM Sitharaman. PM Modi is always focused on job creation connected to every new scheme, she says.
The Union government not announcing any populist schemes in the interim Union budget 2024 ahead of the Lok Sabha election is "extremely commendable", brokerages have said.
The interim budget surprised positively on the countercyclical fiscal consolidation front, while the details of the incremental capex growth assumptions appear to be somewhat underwhelming, according to Citi Research.
A corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore will be established with fifty-year interest free loan to encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has proposed in the interim budget. The beneficiaries for the funding will be selected through stakeholder process.
FDI inflow during 2014-23 stood at $596 billion marking a golden era, twice the inflow during 2005-14. For encouraging sustained foreign investment, we are negotiating bilateral investment treaties with our foreign partners, in the spirit of ‘first develop India’.
The budget has proposed a scheme to help middle class people living in rented houses, slums, chawls and unauthorised colonies to buy or build their own houses.
The Finance Minister also shared plans to build two crore more homes under PM Awas Yojana (Grameen) in the next five years, taking the total count to five crore.
The interim budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tabled before parliament on Thursday walked the fine line of increasing infrastructure capex while maintaining emphasis on fiscal consolidation.
"All forms of infrastructure, physical, digital or social, are being built in record time," Sitharaman said in her Budget speech.
The outlay for the next fiscal has been increased by 17% over the revised estimate for FY24 to Rs 11.11 lakh crore, representing 3.4% of the GDP. Meanwhile, the government is aiming for fiscal deficit print of 5.1% next year, and below 4.5% by 2025-26.
