India confident of achieving fiscal deficit target, on course with glide path: FM Sitharaman

The government is confident of achieving its fiscal deficit target and sticking to the glide path to trim it to 4.5% of the GDP by FY26, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Parliament on Tuesday, addressing concerns raised by the Opposition on the budget.

Sitharaman also outlined the government’s budgetary allocations for social sector welfare schemes, public capex, expenditure on states, and employment in her address on Tuesday.

The Centre’s expenditure is expected to grow by 7.3% over FY24 to ₹48.21 trillion, Sitharaman said. 
 

In her reply to the debate, she said that allocations for welfare schemes in agriculture, health, women’s welfare, rural and urban development, as well as education, skilling and allocation to states had increased. 

The government had allocated money to all states even though the budget only mentioned two states—Andhra Pradesh and Bihar—the finance minister clarified to members of the Lok Sabha. 

There have been accusations of bias as the ruling parties in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar are the Bharatiya Janata Party’s coalition partners in the Union government formed after the 2024 general elections.

The government allocated ₹15,000 crore for the development of Andhra Pradesh’s capital Amravati in the union budget along with additional funding in future years, while providing Bihar with a ₹11,500 crore outlay for irrigation and flood mitigation. The Centre also included both these states in the Purvodaya plan, a roadmap for economic development of eastern states.

Compared with last year, the government allocated ₹8,000 crore more to agriculture and allied sectors, and ₹28,000 crore more to education, employment and skilling in the FY25 budget, Sitharaman said. 

The expenditure on employment and skilling was a key part of the budget, where the finance minister announced five new schemes with an outlay of ₹2 trillion to be spent over the next five years.

Sitharaman said that the latest budget was the first with the vision of making India a developed nation by 2047, while noting that government spending on capex has borne fruit.

FM questions credibility of Global Hunger Index

The finance minister also questioned the credibility of the Global Hunger Index that has ranked India below many war-torn and conflict-affected countries even as key government schemes provided free food to 800 million people.

Sitharaman’s address came after several opposition leaders including Supriya Sule and Shashi Tharoor raised questions about the budgetary allocations for social sectors like health and education. 

Senior leaders of the I.N.D.I Alliance such as former finance minister P. Chidambaram alleged that the Union government had copied the internship policy mentioned in the Indian National Congress party election manifesto.