Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said the Union Budget strikes a fine balance between growth, employment, and fiscal consolidation, and promotes cooperative federalism.
Replying to the discussion on the Union Budget 2024-25 and Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir Budget in Rajya Sabha, the Minister said the Government is on track to achieve the pre-announced fiscal deficit target of 4.5 per cent by 2025-26.
In her reply, Sitharaman also talked about high inflation during the UPA rule while highlighting the measures taken by the Modi Government on price front. Sitharaman, also a Former Defence Minister, said the Agniveer Scheme to recruit people in the age group of 17.5 to 21 years, is aimed at keeping the armed forces fit, young and battle-ready.
The Minister, who presented her seventh Union Budget, also said the economic document proposes unflinching support for cooperative federalism. “I would like to underline that our unflinching commitment to cooperative federalism. The total resources proposed to be transferred to the States in 2024-25 are estimated at `22.91 lakh crore. This actually entails an increase of ` 2.49 lakh crore over 2023-24,” the Minister said.
She said capital expenditure is pegged at ` 11.11 lakh crore. “This is the biggest ever allocation for Capital expenditure and it shows increase of about 17 per cent over the RE and provisional actuals of the FY 2023-24,” she said, adding that during the Congress-led UPA era, the capex allocation was ` 13.19 lakh crore between 2004-05 to 2013-14.
“Whereas during our tenure from 2014 to 2024, the allocation for capex has been ` 43.82 lakh crore from 2014-15 to 2023-24,” she said.
On criticism that she only referred to two States in her Budget speech and ignored the rest, Sitharaman said the Budget is for all States, in past also, including the UPA era, the names of all States were not mentioned. She emphasised that if a State has not been mentioned in the speech, it does not mean there is no allocation for it.
Several Opposition members had raised issues related to the devolution of taxes to States. To this, Sitharaman it is wrong to calculate devolution based on gross tax receipts, and then claim that the Centre is devolving less than what is suggested by the Finance Commission.
The Finance Minister highlighted that for agriculture and allied sectors the Budget has allocated ` 1.52 lakh crore, which is `8,000 crore more than the previous year. For comparison, in 2013-14, the last year of Congress-led UPA, only ` 30,000 crore was allocated for agriculture.
She also took on Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram for misleading statement regarding appointment of DGPs in States. Sitharaman countered Chidambaram's contention by asserting that the scheme “is a very reformative step to enhance the capabilities and battle readiness of our armed forces”.