Jul 23, 2024 10:22 AM IST
Union Budget 2024 key highlights: This is Nirmala Sitharaman’s seventh consecutive budget speech.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will table the Union Budget 2024 in the Parliament shortly. This will be her seventh consecutive budget speech. With this, she will surpass late Morarji Desai’s record of presenting the budget six times consecutively. This will be the Modi government 3.0’s first budget. All eyes are on Nirmala Sitharaman’s possible announcements on income tax, ease of doing business and railway infrastructure.
Nirmala Sitharaman will also present the estimated receipts and expenditure of the Central government for the year 2024-2025 in the Rajya Sabha today. On February 1, the Central government tabled the interim budget that took care of the financial needs of the country ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
On Monday, Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Economic Survey, which reviewed the state of the economy and the projections of economic indicators.
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Per the Economic Survey, the country is expected to grow at a rate of 6.5-7 per cent in the current financial year. This is lower than the 8.2 per cent growth seen in the previous 2023-24 (April 2023 to March 2024) fiscal and below RBI’s 7.2 per cent estimate for the current financial year.
The Economic Survey also lauded the government’s policy measures to stem retail inflation. The inflation was 5.4 per cent, the lowest since the pandemic hit Indian shores.
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The document also recommended boosting exports.
India can either integrate into China’s supply chain or promote foreign direct investment from China, it added.
“Among these choices, focusing on FDI from China seems more promising for boosting India’s exports to the US, similar to how East Asian economies did in the past,” it added.