After meeting President Ram Nath Kovind, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her deputy, Ministry of State Anurag Thakur arrived in Parliament to attend a meeting of Cabinet ministers ahead of the presentation of the Union Budget.
The Union Budget 2020 will be presented in a short while from now.
Like last year, Sitharaman opted for a traditional 'bahi-khata' to carry budget documents. Dressed in a crisp yellow silk saree, the minister carried the documents wrapped in a red silk cloth, adorned with the Indian emblem in golden.
The Union Budget 2020 will be presented in a short while from now. The Budget speech will begin at around 11 am today with Sitharaman beginning it with an address to the speaker of Lok Sabha. Usually, the duration of the presentation ranges from 90 to 120 minutes.
The word 'budget' has its origin in the French word Bougette, which means leather briefcase. Traditionally, budget documents -- which primarily include papers related to revenue receipt and expenditure as well as the speech of finance minister -- were carried in a brown briefcase, a legacy passed on by the British.
However, traditional Indian businessmen used bahi-khata to maintain their books of account. India's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to rebound and grow at a rate of 6 to 6.5 per cent in the next financial year 2020-21, according to the Economic Survey laid in Parliament on Friday.
Weak global growth impacting the country and investment slowdown due to crisis in the domestic financial sector had led to the government to estimate GDP expansion at 5 per cent for the current financial year ending on March 31.
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