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Indian budget criticized for being unfeasible
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India’s finance minister yesterday boasted he had slashed the fiscal deficit lower than his target, while unveiling a pre-election budget that political opponents and analysts said contained unrealistic calculations.
Amid uproar in parliament as lawmakers shouted him down, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram also unveiled tax breaks for struggling manufacturers and more money for defense.
He said he would contain the deficit for the current fiscal year through March at 4.6 percent of gross domestic product, below his target of 4.8 percent.
“I can confidently assert that the economy is more stable today than what it was two years ago,” Chidambaram said, while warning that action was needed to revive manufacturing.
Yesterday’s budget was an interim exercise ahead of the election due by May which the government looks sets to lose. The parliament will be asked to approve only the period until the new administration takes charge.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which polls say is best placed to lead a new coalition government after the election, criticized Chidambaram for cutting spending on public investment while increasing outlay on subsidies and pushing 350 billion rupees (US$5.7 billion) of oil subsidy spending onto the next administration.
“This move is a mere statistical illusion to keep the fiscal deficit looking optically correct while its inflationary impact on the economy remains real,” said senior party leader Arun Jaitley.
Party President Rajnath Singh warned that cuts of some 798 billion rupees to public investment spending announced for the current fiscal would hurt the economy.
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