Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presents the most challenging budget of his tenure on Wednesday, as he seeks to appease voters still hurting from the radical monetary shock therapy that his government has administered.
The 2017-18 budget comes less than three months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bold and risky gamble to outlaw high-value old currency notes, which has slammed the brakes on Asia’s third-largest economy and hit the poor particularly hard.
Senior officials with direct knowledge of budget planning say Jaitley may allow the federal fiscal deficit to overshoot an earlier target of 3 per cent of gross domestic product to leave room for the government to ramp up public investment. On Tuesday, the finance ministry’s chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian unveiled his Economic Survey, which included assumptions underpinning the 2017-18 budget – and floated new policy ideas.