Union Budget 2024 Date, Time Highlights: With the new government sworn in, all eyes are now on the full Budget for FY25. Whar are the possible dates for Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget presentation? Well, reports indicate that the Budget may be presented towards the end of July with the commencement of the Monsoon Session of the Parliament.
Pre-budget consultations, starting June 18 and lasting seven to ten days, will influence the final schedule. Depending on when these consultations finish, the budget is expected to be tabled towards the end of July, closer to the third week. The probable dates for Budget presentation vary from July 15 – 22 .
Union Budget 2024 Date and Time Live Updates: Follow real-time updates here on Budget FY25 Expected Date, FM Nirmala Sitharaman's speech, Budget expectations, and much more.
CII President Sanjiv Puri recommends income tax relief for the lowest slab in the upcoming budget to counter high inflation. He calls for a consensus platform for reforms. CII anticipates Budget 2024-25 to prioritize public capital expenditure, fiscal discipline, social infrastructure, a green fund, and rural sector investment.
The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha will begin on June 24, and the session will conclude on July 3. Following this, the Union Budget is likely to be presented, in the month of July. The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha will have new members of the Lower House taking oath and the Speaker will be elected. President Droupadi Murmu will address a joint sitting of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on June 27.
The logistics industry is undergoing a technological and structural transformation due to the National Logistics Policy and PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan. Continued infrastructure investment in the full budget is essential to sustain this growth, enabling a robust distribution network and stronger global value chain linkages.
According to a Reuters report, the Indian economy grew impressively at 8.2% in 2023-24, but consumption growth lagged behind, reaching only half that rate. During his bid to form the National Democratic Alliance-led government, Prime Minister Modi had emphasized that his administration would focus on boosting middle-class savings and improving their quality of life.
The Financial Minister Nirmala Sitharam presented the interim budget on February 1, 2024. In the interim budget presented in February this year, the government has projected a reduction in fiscal deficit to 5.1% of GDP in FY25.
The Union Budget was leaked in 1950, despite the high security. During that time, John Mathai was the finance minister. After the leak, the printing of the Budget was shifted from Rashtrapati Bhawan to Minto Road. And later, after 1980, the budget printing process shifted to the North Block basement.
The Union Budget was printed exclusively in English until 1955. However, starting with the 1955-56 Budget, because of an initiative led by the then Finance Minister CD Deshmukh, it began to be presented in both English and Hindi.
The Union Budget, until 1999, was presented at 5 pm on the final day of February and this practice was inherited from British India. The timing of the presentation was determined by Britain’s local time, during the colonial era. During then, the Budget was presented in Britain at 11 am (local time), which corresponded to 5 pm in India.
Yashwant Sinha, later in 1999, proposed that the Union Budget should be presented at 11 am. He was the finance minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government. This was done so that there was sufficient time for a more thorough analysis of the numbers, leading to more informed debates and discussions.
The rationale behind this change was to allow sufficient time for a more thorough analysis of the numbers, leading to more informed debates and discussions. He became the first finance minister to present the Union Budget at 11 am in the history of independent India.
The Union Budget used to be presented at the end of the month of February. But in 2017, Arun Jaitely declared that the Union Budget will not be presented on the final working day of February, as was the practice during the colonial period, but on February 1. He ended the 92-year old practice. The tradition had originated in the 1860s when officials of the East India Company introduced it in India.
Arun Jaitley had mentioned that as the Budget was presented at the end of February, the government used to get very little time to prepare for the new policies and changes that would take effect from April 1.
There is no clarity on the exact date when the Budget will be presented yet. However, as per many media reports, the Union Budget for 2024-2025 is likely to be tabled during the Monsoon Session of the Parliament. This session is expected to be scheduled after mid-July and the possible dates for tabling the Budget could be anytime after July 20 with July 22 emerging as a potential date according to some reports.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman might be well on the way to make history. When she presents the full Budget for FY25 next month, it will be the seventh consecutive budget presented by her. This then exceeds the record held by Morarji Desai who presented 6 Budgets in a row earlier. While the dates of the Budget is yet to be finalised and all eyes are on the Special Session of the Parliament that's set to kickstart soon, the books of records and history are sure to continue buzzing.
While there were no alterations or announcements about the tax structure within the interim budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman highlighted the significant developments related to it. The finance minister noted that the tax collection had more than doubled over the past decade. She also talked about the reduction of the average processing time for tax returns to 10 days this year.
During the interim budget presentation earlier in February, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman disclosed that the allocation for the upcoming year will rise by 11.1 per cent to 11.11 lakh crore, which amounts to 3.4 per cent of the GDP.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the interim budget on February 1, refrained from making any policy announcement or taxation changes.
A government that is going through a transition period or is in its last year in office before the general elections held every 5 years, cannot present a full Union Budget in the election year. In such a case, the finance minister presents an interim budget during the joint sitting of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha in Parliament.
It contains a detailed documentation of all the expenses to be incurred and every rupee to be earned through taxes in the next few months until the elections. The incumbent government, through an interim budget, seeks a vote of approval from Parliament to extract money from the consolidated fund of India, to meet its budget expenses before the financial year ends. It also consists of some policy measures.
According to media reports, Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman is likely to present the Union Budget on July 22. The monsoon session will begin on July 22 and is expected to continue till August 9. Per the report, the Budget will be tabled on the first day of the session.
The finance minister had presented the interim budget for FY24 on February 1, 2024, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
The tax department, on April 21, announced that India’s net direct tax collections for the fiscal year that ended in March 2024, stood at Rs 19.58 crore, up 17.7 per cent on-year. In FY24, net collections of income and corporation taxes surpassed the revised estimates by Rs 13,000 crore and budget estimates by Rs 1.35 lakh crore, or 7.40 per cent.
The government had, in the interim budget, increased the target for direct tax collection target in FY24 (April 2023 to March 2024) to Rs 19.45 lakh crore. This took the gross tax collection target, per the revised estimate, at Rs 34.37 lakh crore for FY24.
The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha will begin on June 24, and the session will conclude on July 3. Following this, the Union Budget is likely to be presented, in the month of July. The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha will have new members of the Lower House taking oath and the Speaker will be elected. President Droupadi Murmu will address a joint sitting of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on June 27.
According to sources, the full Budget for FY25 may incorporate a directional road map for the next five years. The Government is likely to align policies with the vision of making India a developed country by 2047.
CII President Sanjiv Puri said that India's economy is expected to grow at a ‘robust’ 8% in FY25. He cited the second generation reforms that the Narendra Modi-led government will undertake, good monsoon prospects, and the improved external situation, for this growth forecast. “A lot of policy interventions in the past have put the economy on a much stronger wicket,” he said. CII’s growth projection for this fiscal is way higher than the Reserve Bank’s forecast of 7.2%. India's economy had expanded by 8.2% in FY24.
In the interim budget presented in February this year, the government has projected a reduction in fiscal deficit to 5.1% of GDP in FY25. The fiscal deficit had hit a record high of 9.2% in FY21.
In its June monetary policy committee meet, the RBI decided to keep its repo rate unchanged at 6.50 per cent, for the eighth time in a row. The RBI MPC met for the first time after the Lok Sabha Elections 2024. The six-member MPC decided to keep the interest rate unchanged by a 4:2 majority. Meanwhile, economists opined that the rate cut cycle is unlikely to start before October 2024.
The Modi 3.0 has approved a release of Rs 20,000 crore to 93 million farmers as the 17th instalment of direct cash benefit programme – Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-kisan). This is the new government's “first” decision after it assumed office. More than Rs 3 trillion have been transferred to farmers’ bank accounts, since the launch of direct cash transfer scheme in February, 2019.
The Narendra Modi-led NDA government coming back to power shows that policy continuity will be the order of the day. Tanvee Gupta Jain, Chief India Economist, UBS, said that India's general election outcome has ensured political stability, which should help maintain policy continuity, while maintaining that UBS sees risk of a populist bias in the third term, particularly aimed at the lower-income strata, potentially delaying tougher economic reforms. "The apparent dichotomy between resilient GDP growth and below-trend household consumption post-pandemic highlights the need for a broad-based capex recovery," she added.
States’ capital expenditure likely rose by over a quarter in 2023-24 compared with a 18% rise in 2022-23. This was supported by the Centre’s interest-free loans to them and the states’ own robust revenue growth.
A review of the finances of 24 states by FE, showed that their capex in FY24 rose to Rs 7.16 trillion compared with Rs 5.68 trillion in the previous year, a rise of 26%. These states are: Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, Assam, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Tripura, Sikkim, Nagaland and Meghalaya.
These states’ capex includes Rs 1.09 trillion in 50-year loans given by the Centre in FY24 compared with Rs 81,000 crore in FY23, and around Rs 15,000 crore in the year before.
In its June Global Economic Prospects report, World Bank said that India will remain the fastest-growing of the world’s largest economies, and its pace of expansion is expected to moderate with a steady average annual growth of 6.7% between FY25 and FY27. It raised India’s growth projection by 0.2 percentage points each to 6.6% for FY25 and 6.7% in FY26 compared with its projection in January this year.
India’s factory output growth, as measured by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), fell to a three-month low of 5% in April as against 5.4% in March, due to a drop in manufacturing activity, data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) showed. Manufacturing output’s growth during April eased to 3.9% from 5.8% in March, whereas mining growth rose to 6.7% from 1.3%. Electricity output’s growth also increased to 10.2% in April from 8.6% in March.
Retail food inflation remained flat at 8.69% on year in May 2024 compared with 8.7% in April as the prices of vegetables, pulses and cereals continued to be elevated. However the consumer food price index (CFPI) recorded a sequential decline of 0.73% in May. In May 2023, the food inflation was 4.31% y-o-y. Deflation in edible oils continued in May, 2024. Inflation in vegetables was 27.33% in May compared to 27.8% in April. The rise in retail prices of potatoes last month was 55.43% against an increase of 53% y-o-y in April due to prospects of a drop in output. Potato prices were in the negative zone during February 2023 to January 2024. Retail inflation in onions rose 36.71% last month, marginally lower than the 36.58% rise on year in April. Tomato prices rose by 40.96% last month against a 41.95% rise in April.
Earlier on June 1, 2024, data released by the Ministry of Finance stated that GST collections during the month of May 2024 came in at Rs 1.73 lakh crore, recording a growth of 10 per cent on-year. For the previous month (April), GST collection had breached the Rs 2 lakh crore milestone. The gross GST collection during April had hit a record of Rs 2.10 lakh crore, up 12.4 per cent on-year.
The Ministry of Finance further added that the growth was driven by a strong increase in domestic transactions (up 15.3 per cent) and slowing of imports (down 4.3 per cent).
The Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) collection stood at Rs 32,409 crore and the State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) came in at Rs 40,265 crore. Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST), meanwhile, was recorded at Rs 87,781 crore, including Rs 39,879 crore collected on imported goods.
The previous GST Council meeting was held on October 7, 2023, and was presided over by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and attended by Finance MoS Shri Pankaj Chaudhary, the Revenue Secretary, Chairman CBIC, Member CM, Member GST, Member TP and senior officers from Union Government and States. In its October meeting, the GST Council had decided to impose a 28 per cent levy on online gaming, casinos, and horse racing. Later in the March GST meeting, the council postponed the review of the 28 per cent levy imposed on the proceeds from online gaming.