by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Exclusive story
PM-FM Brainstroming over Budget
meetings on a daily basis for hours
Both worried over the state of economy
Focus on Farm & Job Creation
Harish Gupta
New Delhi, Jan. 8
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started holding pre-Budget meetings with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and top officials of the PMO and Finance Ministry.
Extremely worried over the state of economy and voices of concern emanating from various quarters, the Prime Minister has set a new precedent by actively playing a role in the Budget making exercises.
Highly placed sources in the PMO say that Jaitley is meeting the Prime Minister virtually on a daily basis for hours together and later officials of the finance ministry also join to provide required information. These sources say such meetings go until late in the night. Normally, the Prime Ministers have adopted hand-off approach to the Budget-making exercise and interact with their finance ministers once or twice on policy issues. Even Modi had adopted hand-off approach since 2014 with regard to the Union Budget. Jaitley used to visit Modi and apprise him of important points and take a few suggestions.
But the 2018 Budget will be different, it seems. It will have a clear stamp of Modi as he is going into the details of all major proposals and wants to understand everything to get at the bottom. Modi is now hands-on PM and policy issues and giving direction to the Budget. It is clear from the deliberations that Modi is looking for a one Big Idea to hit upon the farm sector which is in great distress. Modi wants agriculture and farm sector to be the main focus of his budget which can also lead to job creation. He was also toying with the idea of bringing a new agriculture minister. but it has now been kept in abeyance. Jaitley has already made it clear that the government's priority will, be to accelerate growth momentum, employment generation and focus on farm sector.
Instead of raising the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of crop, Modi government is focusing on reducing cost of farming, providing technology, giving the farmer fertilizer needed for his soil, storage and marketing facilities. For the first time in the country, 12 types of fertilizers will be provided in the country to the farmers as per their soil health cards. All fertilizer companies have started implementing the scheme. The import of agriculture produce is being restricted and export of sugar and other crop is being liberalised. The focus will be on increased allocation for NREGA. The allocation will go up from Rs 69000 crores to Rs 80,000 to provide immediate help to the people in the villages.
