Budget to focus on farmers, jobs, poverty eradication: Jayant Sinha

NEW DELHI: The upcoming Budget will be citizen-centric with a focus on farm sector, job creation and eradication of poverty, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said today.

This will be the second full-fledged Budget of the ruling NDA government, and will be unveiled in Parliament on February 29.

"We are working very hard in the Finance Ministry to be able to prepare a Budget that will truly eradicate poverty, provide prosperity for our farmers, help in massive job creation for young people and provide a better quality of life for all Indian citizens," Sinha said.

In his pre-Budget message on Finance Ministry's YouTube channel, the minister said the Budget will be forward-looking "that will ensure that India continues to be a haven of stability and growth in a very turbulent global environment".

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's core Budget team includes Sinha, Finance Secretary Ratan Watal, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia, Disinvestment Secretary Neeraj Gupta and Financial Services Secretary Anjuly Chib Duggal.

The upcoming budget will be third by Jaitley, including the interim Budget of July 2014.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has kept India's growth projection unchanged at 7.3 per cent in the current fiscal and 7.5 per cent in the next. As for the world growth, IMF forecast is 3.4 per cent for 2016 and 3.6 per cent for 2017.