Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday called for a “larger consensus” across the political spectrum on the government’s road map to take advantage of the opportunity before the country to grow at a faster pace.
“There could be ideological differences. (But,) we need a larger consensus on the growth road map,” Jaitley said in the Upper House of Parliament, while replying during a discussion on the General Budget.
Pointing out that the latest Budget came at a crucial time when the global economy is facing a challenge, he said “we are certainly recovering, that recovery should be faster than what is actually happening.”
The government expects the economy to clock 7.4% growth in FY15, before accelerating to over 8% in FY16.
Jaitley said the fundamentals of the Indian economy are strong and singled out the rupee to say that it has kept pace with the US dollar while other emerging market currencies have gone down.
Rebutting the opposition allegations that states may not gain much after the 14th Finance Commission award, the minister said not a single state is going to lose resources under the new formula.
He said because of the higher devolution of central taxes, states together will gain a net amount of Rs 1,35,000 crore from the Centre in FY16, even after reduction of Rs 75,000 crore on account of some central schemes being transferred to states fully or partially.
Because of the higher outgo of resources to states, more spending on infrastructure development and likely burden on account of salary hike of government employees, the Centre has extended the fiscal consolidation roadmap by one year, he said.
Responding to a query, the finance minister said the government’s spending on interest subvention on farm loans would go up to Rs13,000 crore in FY16 from Rs 9,476 crore in FY15.