Budget 2021 aims to reset economy with honesty in numbers, without doles

Budget aims for minimum government interference while ensuring there is certainty in the tax rates and other rules

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman more or less presented a very transparent set of numbers in her Budget speech for Financial Year 2021-22. The markets were surprised but the admission of a 9.5 per cent of GDP fiscal deficit number for FY21; and the estimate of a 6.8 per cent for FY22 leaves no chance for a quibble of hiding bad news in the mounds of budget numbers.

Having done that she has made it easy to keep giveaways to the minimum. She has instead decided to encourage capital asset building by 44 per cent in the economy (year-on-year) and cut