Arun Jaitely to present short-term budget on February

Arun Jaitely, Financial Minister of India will present short-term budget on February 1, 2019 for 2019-2020 fiscal year. The Finance Ministry on Wednesday said, “The work for preparation of interim Budget 2019-20 has already commenced and is now gaining momentum”.

Arun Jaitley to present interim budget on February 1

It would be the last budget of the current government of BJP (NDA) before the elections of 2019. It has already pursued involvements from different central ministries for the budget speech.

To conclude revised expenses for the existing financial year and forecasts for the next financial year, various meetings were held with the ministries of steel, power, and housing and urban development, etc. Last month, the government began the budgetary exercise for 2019-20. The budget Arun Jaitely is going to present will be the sixth consecutive budget produced by him.

The government will be executing isolation which will block the entry of media into the North Block, the seat of the country’s Finance Government from 3^rd December 2018. The confinement would be till the date of presentation of the interim budget by the finance minister in Parliament on February 1, 2019.

As per drill, approval for essential government expenditure for a limited period is taken in an election year and a complete budget is presented by the new government.

The Narendra Modi-led government abandoned the colonial-era tradition of presenting the budget at the end of February. With the prepone of budget, ministries are now distributed their budgeted funds from the start of the financial year beginning April.

This gives government sections more flexibility and margin to spend as well as allow companies time to adjust to business and fiscal policy plans.

Earlier, when the budget was presented at the end of February, the three-stage Parliament approval process used to get completed sometime in middle of May, weeks ahead of the beginning of rainy season. This meant government departments would start expending on projects only from the end of August or September after the end of the monsoon season.