Budget 2023: Subsidies on fertiliser reduced by 22 pc, food 31 pc
Feb 01, 2023
New Delhi [India], February 1 : Subsidies on fertiliser and food for 2023-24 (April-March) have been reduced by 22 per cent and 31 per cent each in comparison to the revised budget estimates for the current financial year ending March 2023.
Accordingly, subsidies on fertiliser have been cut from Rs 225,220 crore to Rs 175,100 crore in 2023-24.
For food, it has been reduced from Rs 287,194 crore to Rs 197,350 crore in 2023-24.
In 2022-23, subsidies on fertiliser and food rose substantially due to free food programme and shooting up of fertiliser prices globally.
For 2022-23, subsidies on fertiliser were estimated to rise from Rs 105,222 crore (Budget estimate) to Rs 225,220 crore (revised estimate).
For food, the subsidy was raised from Rs 206,831 crore (Budget estimate) to Rs 287,194 crore (revised estimate).
Meanwhile, Indian economy is backed by strong macroeconomic fundamentals there are ample indicators to back it.
Be it capital expenditure, asset quality of banks, foreign exchange reserves, GST collections, fiscal consolidation, and convergence of wholesale and retail inflation, Budget document data showed all these indicators to be on a strong ground.
Capital investment outlay is being increased steeply for the third year in a row by 33 per cent to Rs 10 lakh crore for 2023-24, which would be 3.3 per cent of GDP
"This will be almost three times the outlay in 2019-20," finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech on Wednesday.
This increase in recent years, she said, is central to the government's efforts to enhance growth potential and job creation, crowd-in private investments, and provide a cushion against global headwinds.
Presenting the Union Budget, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday pegged the fiscal deficit target for 2023-24 at 5.9 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). In 2022-23, the government pegged fiscal deficit at 6.4 per cent.
The Finance Minister further said that the government intends to bring the fiscal deficit below 4.5 per cent of GDP by the financial year 2025-26.
The Economic Survey, tabled in the Parliament on Tuesday, noted India's GDP is expected to grow in the range of 6 to 6.8 per cent in the coming financial year 2023-24. This is in comparison to the estimated 7 per cent this fiscal and 8.7 per cent in 2021-22.
