Radical Revamp

The government is carrying out a major overhaul of the entire Budget-making exercise to bring in efficiency in public expenditure.

- Joyeeta Dey

Union Budget has for decades been presented on the last day of February. But this could soon change with the government mulling advancing the annual statement of accounts to the end of January to complete the budgetary exercise before the beginning of the new financial year.

The Union Finance Ministry is doing an overhaul of the entire Budget making exercise. This may see scrapping of the current practice of presenting a separate railway Budget. The Union Budget document may also get slimmer with indirect tax proposals finding almost no mention after Excise Duty, Service Tax and other cesses being subsumed in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. The government is also considering abolition of distinction between Plan and non-Plan expenditure and replacing them with capital and revenue expenditure.

The government is of the view that the budgetary exercise should ideally be over by March 31 every year as against the present practice carrying it in two phases spread between February and May. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley opines that there is a "good case" for advancing presentation of the general Budget as also examining merging the railway Budget with it.

New Budget schedule