GOVT TO BEGIN FY24 BUDGET MAKING EXERCISE ON MONDAY

On Monday, October 10, the central government will begin the process of designing its annual budget for the financial year 2023–2024, which is expected to examine measures to spur growth in the face of a gloomy outlook, according to the news agency PTI.

The meeting will start with consultations with several ministries and departments over the revised estimates for the current financial year's expenditures and the funding requirement for 2023–2024.

RE discussions would be held on Monday with the ministries of Youth Affairs and Sports, Labour and Employment, Information and Broadcasting, Statistics and Programme Implementation, and Environment, Forest, and Climate Change.

According to PTI reports, the Finance Secretary and Expenditure Secretary would chair over the majority of these discussions to finalise RE for the current financial year (2022-23) and the Budget Estimate for 2023-24.

According to a notification of the budget division of the finance ministry, the month-long discussions would come to an end on November 10 after consultations with the Ministry of Cooperation, Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Department of Agricultural Research and Education, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Ministry of Railways, and Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

After the pre-Budget meetings, the budget estimates for 2023–24 will be provisionally approved.

All of these meetings would take place in the context of numerous organisations, such as the Reserve Bank and the World Bank, slashing their growth projections for India to 7% and 6.5%, respectively.

It will be the final full budget before the upcoming general elections in April-May 2024 and the fifth budget for the Narendra Modi 2.0 government and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.