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Opposition: Budget lacks direction, won’t spur economic growth New Delhi, February 28 “This Budget is not a policy statement. It brings no directional change. It is merely an accounting exercise wherein expenditure has been cut with no prospect of increase. This may not spur growth. The poor and weaker sections along with the middle classes will be hit the most,” party Parliamentary leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley said in a joint statement. While stating that the Union Budget proposals were verbose in content, but low in ambition, they said it did not offer much to the Indian economy, little to boost manufacturing and nothing to agriculture. “Even the ritual of reference to the ‘aam aadmi’ has been abandoned. It contains no steps that could boost exports, contain inflation and strengthen the rupee. Having brought down the economy to a 5 per cent GDP growth rate, the UPA in its latest Budget fails to lay down even an initial roadmap for walking back to the 9 percent growth rate destination,” they said. Suggesting an apparent jugglery, the party leaders said while both direct and indirect tax rates have been increased for certain sections, expenditure has been either hugely slashed or under-provisioned to make the fiscal deficit “optically presentable”. Interpreting the figures, they said actual provisions were less than projections in terms of percentage points since comparison of allocations has to been made in relation to revised estimates of the current year's budget that had been cut. For instance, the Food Subsidy Bill was estimated this year at Rs 75,000 crore. The actual revised estimate shows an expenditure of Rs 85,000 crore. For the next year’s budget estimate, this amount has been reduced to Rs 80,000 crore and the Finance Minister claims to have provided Rs 10,000 crore extra because
of the Food Security Bill. Effectively, it is only an increase of Rs 5,000 crore whose impact on food subsidy will be marginal, they said. There is a warning in the budget, they said, pointing out that the aim to bring down petroleum subsidy to Rs 65,000 crore, indicates that petrol, diesel and gas prices will increase further. The CPM said the budget lacks imagination to think beyond neo-liberal prescriptions by relying on reducing fiscal deficit by curbing expenditure and failing to address the major concerns of the people and economy in the current context. Describing it as “anti-poor”, the party said it does not respond adequately to the urgent needs of the people and instead provided sops to the corporate. Comparing the taxes not collected during the current year as against the previous fiscal, CPM MP Sitaram Yechury said: “The tax not collected, mainly from the rich, is Rs 53,000 crore more than the fiscal deficit. So, the government is only subsidising the rich and the corporates,” he said, adding that even after 10 per cent surcharge on tax for “super-rich”, concessions granted to them were much more than the revenue to be earned from it.
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