FM to hold pre-Budget meets on June 4, 5

NEW DELHI: Restoring the tradition of widespread pre-Budget consultations, finance minister P Chidambaram will meet corporate honchos and agriculturists on Friday.
The practice of formal pre-Budget consultations was scrapped when Jaswant Singh was the finance minister during the NDA regime.
Mr Chidambaram’s maiden pre-Budget consultations under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime will begin with two meetings on June 4, one with agriculturists and the other with corporate leaders. These meetings would be followed by two sessions with trade union leaders and economists on June 5.
With the government planning to present the full Budget for ’04-05 by the first week of July, leaving very little time for preparations, the formal consultation with various segments would only be limited to two days. Under earlier governments, pre-Budget consultations used to last for a week.
When Yashwant Sinha was NDA’s finance minister, the elaborate discussions included even a session with senior economic editors, but his successor, Mr Singh, scrapped the process. Instead, Mr Singh called for suggestions through e-mail and the finance ministry’s website.
If the full Budget for ’04-05 is presented in the first week of July, the government would have to speed up its approval by both Houses of Parliament before the end of July. Otherwise, the UPA government may have to go in for a vote on account since the current approval for government expenditure is valid only till the end of July. The NDA government had presented an interim Budget in February so that Lok Sabha elections could be advanced.
The full Budget is being watched with interest since the policies of UPA are in variance with the NDA on various counts, including privatisation and labour policy. While this is the maiden Budget for the Congress-led UPA, it is the third Budget for Mr Chidambaram. As the finance minister of the United Front government, he had presented the 1996-’97 and the 1997-’98 Budgets, bringing about sharp reduction in taxes and this led the second one to be described as ‘dream’ Budget.