The meetings, which will continue through November 11, are being held to firm up budgetary allocations for 2025-26 and finalise the revised estimates for the current fiscal year. Every year, the Budget-making process formally starts with meetings with the ministries and departments.
As per the schedule, the meeting with the ministries of civil aviation will be held on October 11, followed by that with the ministries of petroleum (October 14), industry and MSME (October 15), housing and electronics (October 17), rural development (October 18), home (October 22), defence and external affairs (October 24), corporate affairs, textiles and steel (October 28), agriculture (November 5), road transport (November 7) and railways (November 11).
Similarly, the meeting with the departments of revenue and telecommunications will take place on October 21, followed by those with the departments of economic affairs (October 24), expenditure and financial services (October 25) and investment and public asset management (October 28), among others.
The schedule comes after the Budget circular by the department of economic affairs (DEA) last week in which it had said the meetings will dwell on four important issues. These include the requirement of funds across all expenditure categories, along with receipts of ministries and departments; the receipts of commercial undertakings run by various departments, which are netted against gross expenditure; non-tax revenues, including arrears; and net expenditure estimates.
The DEA has also asked the departments to be realistic in their expenditure projections, in sync with a circular issued in December 2022.After these meetings with ministries and departments, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will likely engage with various stakeholders, including industry captains, economists and sector experts.The Budget for 2025-26 will indicate whether the government intends to keep up its promises of containing the fiscal deficit ratios at 5.1% of GDP and below 4.5% in this financial year and the next, respectively.
The next budget also assumes significance as it marks the final year of the 15th Finance Commission (FC) cycle. So, any expenditure liability from schemes that are co-terminus with the current FC will have to be cleared for running into the 16th FC cycle.