Covid spending to tax revenue: Key numbers to watch out for in Budget 2021

 

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting her third Budget in a short while from now. Here are the key numbers to watch out for in the Budget for 2021-22, which is widely expected to be a "economic vaccine" for the pandemic-battered economy.

Sitharaman, who had in her first budget in 2019 replaced leather briefcase -- which had been in use for decades for carrying budget documents -- with a traditional red cloth 'bahi-khata', had last month stated that the budget for the fiscal year 2021-22 will be "like never before".

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Covid-19 spending: India has started the world's largest Covid inoculation programme from January 16 and is using two vaccines Covishield and Covaxin. The expenditure on vaccination this fiscal as well as in the next would be the most watched figures in the Budget.

Fiscal Deficit: The budgeted fiscal deficit, which is the difference between government expenditure and income, was 3.5 per cent for current fiscal "ending March 31.However, the revised number would over-shoot this by a large margin due to the fiscal stimulus given to support the economy following Covid-19 outbreak. The number for 2021-22 fiscal would be in focus. Read More