Budgeted subsidy will cover food spending - finance minister

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Budgeted food subsidy of 900 billion rupees is adequate to take care of the cost of the rollout of a plan to provide cheap food grains to the poor this fiscal year, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said on Thursday.

Indian stocks plummeted more than 3 percent in each of the two sessions after the lower house of parliament approved the plan on Monday, on fears additional government spending on subsidies would widen the fiscal deficit.

(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh)