New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is going to present the Union Budget 2022-23 for the financial year 2022-23 (FY23) on February 1, 2022. At the same time, the budget of the country (Budget 2022) will be green this year as well. Due to the Covid epidemic, the presentation of tax proposals of Asia’s third-largest economy and the printing of a large number of documents related to the Financial Statement will not happen this time also.
Budget documents will be mostly in digital form
Officials said the budget documents would be mostly available in digital form. Only a few copies will be available physically. Several hundred copies of the budget document have been printed. It was such an elaborate process numerically that even the printing workers had to be isolated for at least a few weeks inside the printing press in the basement of North Block.
The work of keeping the employees away from their families and printing the budget document has been started with the traditional ‘Halwa Ceremony’. The program is attended by the Finance Minister, Minister of State for Finance, and senior officials of the Ministry. After the Modi government came to power, the printing of budget copies decreased. Initially, the copies distributed to journalists and external analysts were reduced, and then the copies given to Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs were reduced, citing the pandemic.
Halwa ceremony also postponed due to Omicron
This year more restrictions have been imposed regarding the Omicron variant of Covid-19. According to sources, the traditional pudding ceremony has also been abandoned due to the pandemic. However, to digitize the compilation of budget documents, a small group of employees will need to be isolated.
The budget document usually consists of the Finance Minister’s speech to Parliament, keynotes, annual financial statements, a finance bill containing tax proposals, a memorandum explaining the provisions in the financial bill, and a macroeconomic profile. These include medium-term fiscal policy cum fiscal policy strategy statement, outcome framework for schemes, customs notification, implementation of previous budget announcements, receipt budget, expenditure budget, and budget estimates.
