D. Subramaniam

The economy needed priority focuses on containing ‘fiscal deficit’ and ‘inflation’ and sustain growth. While the Finance Minister‘s budget proposal have mainly focused in addressing the fiscal deficit by bringing it down to 5.5%, the steps taken to address inflation do not seem to be adequate.
While increasing the price of petrol is understandable, diesel could have been spared. Now with sourcing of new gas finds an LPG cylinder of smaller capacity could have been introduced which could have been priced in a such a way that it is affordable and yet without much of subsidy.
The inflation is mainly fueled by food items and FMs budget proposals in agriculture seem to be very inadequate. The total credit flow target of Rs 3,75,000 Cr (an increase of Rs 50,000 Cr) is just seem to be not enough when the entire country’s problem are revolving around Agriculture. The focus on food security is not addressed especially when there is monsoon failure and abnormal price increases noticed in dhal varieties and sugar and mounting food import bills due to high global prices.
Also the budget has not initiated any reforms in PDS as IT could have played a major role in monitoring the availability of stocks of food items distributed through PDS. A national level grid could have helped in planning and positioning of items and also for replenishing the stocks when needed. The unique identity card, ration cards, identification of people BPL etc could have been addressed under the grid with a decent budget allocation.

D.Subramaniam
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