-Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability
New Delhi: The first budget of the new government offers few changes in terms of policy priorities from the interim budget for 2014-15 presented earlier this year, but it does reinforce some of the pro-market inclinations that had defined the last three budgets of the UPA-II government. The total size of the Union Budget in 2014-15 was projected in the interim budget to be Rs. 17.63 lakh crore, while this budget proposes a slightly higher figure of Rs. 17.94 lakh crore. However, the total expenditure from the Union Budget in 2014-15 would be 13.9 % of GDP, which is visibly lower than the 15.7 % of GDP in 2013-14 (Revised Estimates). Thus, the NDA government is clearly following the same trajectory of conservative fiscal policy as the erstwhile UPA-II government did in the wake of their inability to step up the tax-GDP ratio.
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