File Picture
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the 2020-21 union budget was prepared keeping the FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management) in mind even as she maintained she would be remembered for presenting the “longest prepared budget” than for “longest speech” on it.
“So in a way all these (measures) and more has been done that the FRBM, as an Act, we have to keep in mind and also comply with it. So we have not really breached the FRBM.
We have not gone outlandish on it. “We have kept fiscal discipline, which is a USP for both the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and also for the Shri Narendra Modi government,” she said.
The Centre had earlier said it was committed to reducing fiscal deficit — the gap between total expenditure and revenue — to 3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2020-21 and eliminate the primary deficit as per the FRBM Act.
The government has utilised ‘escape clause’ under the FRBM Act, which allows the Centre to breach its fiscal deficit target by 0.5 percentage points at times of severe stress in the economy, including periods of structural change and when growth falls sharply.
