Budget 2024: Capex Up, Fiscal Deficit Down Are Two Huge Positives: Former FICCI President Naina Lal Kidwai

Naina Lal Kidwai On Budget 2024: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the Interim Union Budget for 2024-2025 in Parliament on Thursday said there are no changes in tax rates for direct and indirect taxes, including import duties. She also said the number of tax filers has swollen 2.4 times and the direct tax collection has trebled since 2014.

Finance Minister Sitharaman announced that the capital expenditure outlay for the next year is being increased by 11.1 percent to Rs 11,11,111 crore, which would be 3.4 percent of the GDP.

Indian economy has demonstrated resilience and maintained healthy macro-economic fundamentals, despite global economic challenges. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its World Economic Outlook (WEO), October 2023, has revised its growth projection for India for FY2023-24 upwards to 6.3 percent from 6.1 percent projected in July 2023. This reflects increasing global confidence in India’s economic prowess at a time when global growth projection for 2023 remains unchanged at 3 percent.

 

The Finance Minister stated that strong growth in economic activity has imparted buoyancy to revenue collections and pointed out that GST collection stood at Rs 1.65 lakh crore in December 2023. This is the seventh time that gross GST revenues have crossed the Rs 1.6 lakh crore benchmark.