Budget 2019, the sixth union budget by the Narendra Modi-led government, will be presented by the Interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on February 1, 2019. Union Minister Arun Jaitley is in the US for treatment.
Here the top 10 things you need to know about will present the Interim Budget 2019
- It will be an interim budget and not a full budget, as the general elections are scheduled to be held in April-May. The government will present the complete set of accounts, including expenditure and receipts, and give the complete financial statement for 2019-2020. It is quite similar to a full-budget as the government presents expenditure for the ongoing fiscal and projections for the upcoming fiscal year through it.
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- Interim Budgets enable the governments to function till the time a new government is formed.
- The government can make tax changes in the interim budget under the Constitution. The 12 interim budgets since independence have refrained from announcing big-ticket changes or new schemes. At the same time, several governments, including the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in 2009, haven’t shied away from making policy pronouncements in interim budgets.
- However, with elections on the anvil, some populist measures are expected including tax relief to certain sections of the society, such as farmers and the common man, especially middle class and salaried individuals.
- The big ones are – universal basic income, raising the basic income tax exemption limit to Rs 3 lakh, agri benefits and startups sops.
- Economic Survey will not be presented before the interim budget
Policy changes in the Interim budgets of the past few years
- In 1991, finance minister Yashwant Sinha presented the vote-on-account of the Chandra Shekhar government, he had announced the country’s first policy on disinvestment.
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- In 2004, Jaswant Singh while presenting the interim budget for the Vajpayee-led NDA government merged dearness allowance with basic pay and extended the exemption of long-term capital gains tax. He had also halved the stamp duty.
- In the interim budget in 2014, P. Chidambaram met the long-pending demand of the Armed Forces to have ‘One Rank One Pension’ (OROP), a key poll promise with an eye on the electorally significant community of veterans.
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