Budget 2024 was a bit of a shock for investors due to the changes to the capital gains taxes but the direction to growth reforms remains intact, say experts
Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman (C) holds a folder containing Union Budget documents outside the Ministry of Finance in New Delhi, India on July 23, 2024.
Image: Imtiyaz Khan/Anadolu via Getty Images
Appeasement would be one of the easy ways to describe what the government set out to do through its Budget FY25 presented in Parliament on Tuesday, during the third term of the ruling government. The capital expenditure for the year to March 2025 is kept unchanged at Rs 11.11 lakh crore, as announced during the interim budget and the direction towards lowering of fiscal deficit (as a percentage of GDP)—announced at 4.9 percent for FY25—appears to be in place.
In doing so, the government continued with its signature programmes of home-building through the PM Awas Yojana as well as infrastructure development in the form of rental housing, industrial parks and expressways. The spending for housing was envisaged at Rs 10 lakh crore over the next five years.