9.57 am: Sitharaman meets President Ram Nath Kovind ahead of the Budget presentation. Finance Minister @nsitharaman , MoS Finance & ...
9.57 am: Sitharaman meets President Ram Nath Kovind ahead of the Budget presentation.
Finance Minister @nsitharaman, MoS Finance & Corporate Affairs @ianuragthakur, and senior officials of the Ministry of Finance, called on President Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhavan before presenting the Union Budget 2021-22. pic.twitter.com/FUNptDXnHB
— President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) February 1, 2021
9.33 am: Expansionary Budget in the offing
The Economic Survey, which serves as a good indicator of the mood of the Union Budget, made one thing clear – the government was willing to spend more to provide impetus to the economy. “In order to sustain the recovery in aggregate demand, the government may have to continue with an expansionary fiscal stance,” the survey said. In fact, in an interview last month, the finance minister herself said that there was a “clear need to spend money” without worrying about the fiscal deficit.
9.30 am: In March, the Modi government imposed a lockdown to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. While containment measures had been used by many other countries, the scale of India’s restrictions were unique, bringing the country of more than 1.3 billion people to a sudden halt.
Unsurprisingly, the economic hit this caused was staggering. No other major economy was as badly affected by Covid-19 as India’s. To counter this economic doom and gloom, the Modi...
