 "Jayant Sinha")
Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said on Thursday that the government would present the Union Budget for 2016-17 on February 29, a Monday. He said the Budget would be more than an annual document and will set the road map for the next two-three years.
“We will establish a road map for two or three years,” Sinha said while addressing the India-Korea Business Summit in New Delhi.
Read our full coverage on Union Budget 2016
“We have consistently followed a very clear set of economic policies. We have laid out economic principles very well and we are very confident that we will be able to sustain high growth over a long period of time,” he said.
The Union Budget for any upcoming year is preceded by the economic survey for the running year and the Railway Budget for the upcoming year. Government officials said it is likely that the Economic Survey 2015-16 could be tabled on February 26, which is a Friday. They added that no date had been finalised as yet.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his second full-year Budget, is likely to focus on steps to accelerate economic growth that seems to have stagnated in the 7-7.5 per cent range amid a global slowdown. The finance minister’s Budget team comprises Sinha, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian and NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya, among others.
The official team is led by Finance Secretary Ratan Watal, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia and Disinvestment Secretary Neeraj Gupta.
Speaking on the priorities of the government, Sinha said the first and foremost responsibility was to eliminate poverty. “We are a pro-poor government but we are a pro-market government as well. If competition does not flourish, if market and companies do not flourish, how can we generate economic surplus, the tax revenues that will enable us to eliminate poverty?” he asked.
He said the government was working on increasing productivity of agriculture. On Wednesday, the government announced the National Crop Insurance Programme to protect farmers from crop damage due to natural calamity, adding, the government has launched a programme on irrigation.
As reported earlier, the Budget could see a significant increase in allocation to marquee programmes like the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, and the programme to provide soil health cards to the country’s 140 million farmer families over three years. The increase is likely to be over the allocations in 2015-16.
