Top headlines: Budget bets big on growth, its finances explained in charts

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said huge spending on infrastructure and health care was a key feature of the post-Covid Budget. Read what she said in a post-Budget interaction

Budget bets big on growth: FM squeezes subsidies, raises capex again

Braving the inevitable questions that will be asked by the bond markets and by rating agencies, the government has bet boldly on a growth revival providing India with favourable debt dynamics going forward. The deficit itself has been financed not just through an unprecedented expansion of market borrowing — which will be at Rs 9.6 trillion next year — but also through dipping heavily into the pool of small savings to the tune of almost Rs 48,000 crore over 2020-21 and about Rs 40,000 crore in 2021-22. Read more

Spend, earn, tax: Finances of Union Budget 2021 explained in nine charts

Budget 2021 plans to spend a staggering Rs 11.7 trillion in only three months till March, a record of sorts and taking total spending to Rs 34.5 trillion in FY21. That’s a 28 per cent boost over the previous year. These nine charts will explain the Budget's finances. Read more

Budget 2021: We have spent, we have spent and we have spent, says FM

In a post-Budget interaction with the media, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said huge spending on infrastructure and health care was a key feature of the post-Covid Budget. She also said increased spending and high market borrowings led to a significant widening of the fiscal deficit. Read edited excerpts
 

Union Budget 2021 can reignite animal spirits of entrepreneurs

The finance minister brought to the fore - bold, ambitious and unconventional thinking, writes Kumar Mangalam Birla. Read more

Bad bank, no Covid cess: Why Sensex zoomed 2,300 pts post Budget proposals

The markets gained ground post the Budget speech by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with the S&P BSE Sensex surging over 2,300 points to settle at 48,601 levels. The Nifty50, on the other hand vaulted over 4 per cent during the day to reclaim 14,200 levels.

The optimism despite higher borrowing and a wider fiscal deficit, analysts say, was on account of the positive measures to revive the Covid-19 hit economy. Read more

'Get well soon' outlay: Health care gets best-ever shot in Budget 2021

Health care, the foremost agendum of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitha­raman’s Budget speech, saw an allocation of Rs 223,846 crore —an increase of around 118 per cent over the Revised Estimate — to cover “health and wellbeing” with a large chunk, Rs 35,000 crore, going tow­ards Covid-19 vaccination, a move widely cheered by the industry. Read more

After a year of battling Covid, signs that India may not face second wave

After a year of battling Covid-19, India’s graph of coronavirus cases has been on a steady decline, giving hope that the epidemic may be on its last leg. If this continues, epidemiologists say India might not witness a second wave, something many nations are grappling with. Read more

Non-protectionist but non-performing Budget

The best thing about the Budget is that it has belied the lingering fear in the minds of many importers and analysts that the government would raise customs duty to usher in a protectionist era once again. Nothing like that has been done, writes Sukumar Mukhopadhyay. Read more