Budget 2022: Dilip Ghosh says Mamata prepares Budget ‘walking on treadmill’

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has reached North Block, the office of the ministry of finance.  Here, she will hold a meeting of the officials. The finance minister is also scheduled to meet the President before heading to Parliament. 

MoS finance Pankaj Chaudhary said Budget 2022 will be an inclusive Budget, in line with the needs of each and every sector. "It will be benefiting everyone...All sectors (including farmers) should have expectations from today's Budget," he said to ANI.

Former finance minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram on Tuesday took a jibe at some media platforms and said on the morning after teh Economic Survey, if one reads some newspapers, they will come to the conclusion that there is no opposition in India

PM Modi expects that every group - be it the ruling side or the Opposition - should sit together and listen to the presenting of the Budget and cooperate, minister of state for finance Bhagwat Karad said. 

This is a yearly ritual that officials involved in preparing the Budget documents go for a lock-in period at the ministry. This is to maintain the secrecy of the Budget. They will only be allowed to meet their family members after the Budget is presented today. This year, they went for the lock-in period on January 27.

Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur are going to the polls starting from February 10. The Budget is likely to have some big announcements for these states.

Congress leader Manish Tewari said the biggest budgetary challenge for Nirmala Sitharaman is to create employment for 60% of Indian people. This is the only budgetary number worth watching, he tweeted.

While the fiscal deficit forecast is narrower than the 6.8% gap targeted for the current fiscal year, it’s far wider than the shortfall seen in pre-pandemic years. Sitharaman is expected to propose borrowing a near-record 13 trillion rupees ($174 billion) to bridge the gap, Bloomberg reported.

American companies are expecting tax parity from Nirmala Sitharaman so that they can invest more. Instead of becoming tax terrorism, the tax regime should become tax partners.

Nirmala Sitharaman introduced bahi khata which replaced the tradition of carrying the Budget papers in a briefcase. As Budget went paperless, the bahi khata was replaced by a Made in India tab, which was wrapped in a red bahi khata like cover with the National Emblem embossed on it.

With a few hours to go for Union Budget 2022,  ‘Finance minister Nirmala’ started trending on Twitter.

Reuters reported that Budget 2022 will be focussed on infrastructure spending, health services and social programmes. There are likely to be announcement on more more spending on roads, railways, besides higher subsidies for affordable housing.

1. 80C deduction available up to ₹1.5 lakh a year be revised upwards significantly

2. To make the optional concessionary tax regime, which came into effect from April 2021, more acceptable, raise the threshold ₹15 lakh income for laying peak 30% tax rate

3 . Special tax regime for crypto

4. The burden of the long-term capital gains tax (LTCG), introduced vide Finance Act 2018, has somewhat dented investor confidence. Major economies do not have LTCG tax. In India too, it is expected that LTCG on the sale of Indian-listed equity shares will be exempted as it would boost investment through the stock exchange. 

5. Corporates are expecting that the entire amount or an appropriate proportion of expenditure incurred for helping the society and employee welfare during COVID-19 will be allowed as deductible expenditure. 

Corporates are expecting that the entire amount or an appropriate proportion of expenditure incurred for helping the society and employee welfare during Covid-19 will be allowed as deductible expenditure

Industry wants a specialised regime for taxation of cryptocurrency as crypto assets encompassing a wide array of digital assets like non-fungible tokens, wrapped asset tokens etc, will gain tremendous traction.

Moraraji Desai holds the record of presenting the most number of budgets in the history of the country. He had presented 10 budgets during his stint as finance minister during 1962-69.

He is followed by P Chidambaram (9), Pranab Mukherjee (8), Yashwant Sinha (8) and Manmohan Singh (6)

Since last year, India's Budget has gone paperless cutting down on the expenditure of the printing of the documents. This is called the green or paperless Budget.

The printing of several hundred copies of the voluminous Budget documents was such an elaborate exercise that printing staff had to stay at Noth Block for a couple of weeks to finish the work. 

The Modi government has curtailed the printing of the Budget copies.  To begin with, the copies distributed to journalists and outside analysts were curtailed and then since the pandemic, the copies provided to Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs have been curtailed.

Nirmala Sitharaman called her 2021 Budget as Once-in-a-century-Budget. It was aimed at reviving India's economy via investing in infrastructure and healthcare while relying on an aggressive privatisation strategy and robust tax collection.

Yes, everyone can download the Budget documents from Union Budget Mobile App. This was launched last year as Budget went paperless. The mobile App allows complete access to 14 Union Budget documents, including the Budget Speech, Annual Financial Statement (commonly known as Budget), Demand for Grants (DG), Finance Bill etc. as prescribed by the Constitution. The mobile app is bilingual (English & Hindi) and is available on both Android and iOS platforms.

The App can also be downloaded from the Union Budget Web Portal (www.indiabudget.gov.in). The budget documents will also be available for download by the general public on Union Budget Web Portal (www.indiabudget.gov.in), said the statement by the ministry.

Halwa ceremony marks the final stage of the process of the making of the Union Budget. Halwa is made to mark the occasion, but the pandemic forced the ministry to do away with the ceremony. Instead, sweets were provided to the staff of the ministry who since then were locked at their workplaces.

The Congress said the Economic Survey revealed the intrinsic weakness of the economy of the Modi government. Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala termed the survey a "self-serving cheerful assessment" of the economy that raises doubts about what the Budget is set out to achieve. "The Economic Survey2022 is a classic case of 'what statistics say' versus 'what they actually reveal'. It clearly reveals the intrinsic weakness of the economy and the gross economic mismanagement by the Modi government," Surjewala said in a series of tweets.