Those hoping for big bang populist announcements from the interim budget 2024-’25 were left disappointed as union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s brief speech read more like a report card of the NDA government’s performance in the last ten years, with a sprinkle of measured policy intentions. To be fair, interim budgets offer limited scope for manoeuvrability for governments to unveil their development vision. This was the last budget of the NDA government before the general elections. A full-fledged budget will be presented by the newly-elected government in July. A significant feature of the budget was that personal income tax slabs were left untouched, and nor were there any populist announcements.
However, corporate tax has been reduced to 22 percent. Significantly, there was no new announcement of privatisation of state companies. The finance minister focused on a path of fiscal consolidation with continued interest in capital expenditure and other social welfare services. She has set an ambitious fiscal deficit target of 5.1 percent in the coming fiscal. If budgets are indicators of the mood in the government, then this interim budget reflected a more confident and self-assured ruling dispensation, a few months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Exuding confidence that good governance and a string of pro-poor schemes would help the BJP return to power for the third term, Sitharaman, presenting her sixth straight budget, promised that NDA 3.0 would then unveil a detailed roadmap for a developed India.