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2008-09
The Making of Budget 2008-09 by
Finance Minister
(Jan 18, 2008)
As the time for the upcoming budget 2008-09 nears to get unfolded,
people from various sections of the society awaits eagerly with lot of
hopes and expectations. With the general elections going to be held in
2009, there is a dire need for United Progressive Alliance government to
expect a public friendly budget.
At various pre- budget meetings, finance minister is being presented
with different budget schemes from different sections. Mr. Chidambaram
welcomes ideas and suggestions and ideas on how to enhance various
sections like investments in infrastructure, restructuring the food
fertilizer subsidy along with keeping in mind the interest of the poor
people. In order to release the budget that can prove to be advantageous
for everyone, Finance Minister calls out people from all walks of
industry such as economists, farmers and trade union leaders to give
their opinions before passing out of the final budget of the UPA
government.
The reason behind including the opinions of farm sector representatives
lies in the fact that government had planned to declare the financial
package of around Rs. 30,000 crores for agriculture that is engrossed in
debts. Secretary General of Consortium of Indian Farmers P Chengal Reddy
expressed his opinion of removing all kinds of taxes on various
agriculture inputs, machinery and equipment. He also put forward the
necessary requirement to promote the custom hiring of agriculture
equipment by self-help groups, farmer clubs by subsidizing and
encouraging local grain storage facilities by Panchayats.
About the economists who were the part of the pre-budget deliberations
with the Finance Minister did lacked unity on the issue of reducing
taxes. However many of them opined that the rates remain unchanged
whereas the other part was in favor of lowering rates. The reason put
forward by the group favoring the non- reduction of taxes was that there
are number of fiscal stress points in the offing, like oil bonds, pay
commissions and market stabilization scheme bonds wherein it would not
be considered to be wise to reduce tax rates.
