States Free To Top Up Income Support Scheme

The country’s interim Finance Minister, Piyush Goyal, speaks to Business Today’s Prosenjit Datta, Rajeev Dubey and Anilesh S. Mahajan about the Budget's fiscal math, the role of states in the new income support scheme for farmers and the government’s plans to fulfil its promises in an election year.

How was this news broken to you that you have to present the Budget? How much time did you get to prepare for the Budget speech?

By the time I came in, most of the work was done. Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi was very clear with his vision. And most of the things were already completed by the prime minister and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. I came to know only on Wednesday night (January 24, the Budget was presented on February 1) that I have to present the Budget. I got eight days to prepare for it. The prime minister gave me support, and the finance minister, despite his health, also gave great support. I was in regular touch with him. He prepared the broad framework for the Budget.

One criticism of the Budget is that the figures might not match up. There are apprehensions about revenue numbers as well as expenditure statistics. How is the government dealing with it? How confident are we about meeting the fiscal deficit numbers?

This government, in the last five years, has shown that it is honest with budgets. We have achieved whatever we have promised. Last year, there was some slippage as we did not get GST collections from March. This year, if you remove the 20,000 crore allocated for the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Scheme, we are comfortably meeting the targets. It is easy for any government to adjust 10 bps (fiscal deficit as per cent of GDP). But instructions from the prime minister are clear. The job of the finance ministry is to aggregate the statistics from different ministries/departments. Whatever is the truth, present the truth.

How do you respond to talks about off-Budget spending?