Delhi budget announcement likely in 2nd week of March
The Delhi government is expected to present its budget for 2021-22 in the second week of March, focussing on its key areas of health, education and infrastructure including water supply, although new taxes are unlikely, sources in the government said on Friday.
The government is readying the blue print of the budget and meetings with different departments are being held to determine their demands and likely revenue collections, said a source in the government.
"Economically speaking, 2020-21 was a very difficult time for the government, yet it successfully met all the challenges of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, despite a steep fall in revenue," the source said.
The government had presented Rs 65,000 crore budget for 2020-2021 that was around 10 per cent more than that in 2019-20.
"Although no dates have been fixed for presentation of the budget, it's likely to come around second week of March," the source said.
The government is also "likely" to come out with measures to boost the economy with "enabling measures" for industries and trading in Delhi that were badly hit due to the pandemic in the last fiscal.
New taxes or any hike in the existing rates are "unlikely", the sources said. This year, the Arvind Kejriwal government will be presenting second budget of its third term.
The AAP government has been consistently raising its total budget size since it first came to power in Delhi in 2015. Its first budget totalled Rs 41,500 crore in 2015-16. The size of the budget rose to Rs 46,600 crore in 2016-17, Rs 48,000 crore in 2017-18, Rs 53,000 crore in 2018-19, Rs 60,000 crore in 2019-2020 and Rs 65,000 crore in 2020-21.
Also Read: RBI receives complaints against 1,509 digital lending apps
