Budget 2025: Will the Finance Minister provide a fillip for demand growth?

Why media and policy circles are abuzz with expectations of big announcements on Saturday

Within days of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presenting her maiden Budget in July 2019, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s landslide victory for a second consecutive term, concerns about a deeper economic slowdown began to gain momentum. In response, the government announced a series of sector-specific measures, with the biggest highlight being a corporate tax cut to 22 per cent in September that year. It triggered the biggest market rally in a decade.

 

The current parallels with 2019 are striking. In FY20, economic growth slowed down to 5.1 per cent in the June quarter, the slowest pace in six