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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the Union Budget strikes a fine balance between growth, employment, and fiscal consolidation, and promotes cooperative federalism. The minister said the government is on track to achieve the pre-announced fiscal deficit target of 4.5 per cent by 2025-26.

The minister, who presented her seventh Union Budget, also said the economic document proposes unflinching support for cooperative federalism. She stated ‘I would like to underline that our unflinching commitment to cooperative federalism. The total resources proposed to be transferred to the states in 2024-25 are estimated at Rs 22.91 trillion. This actually entails an increase of Rs 2.49 trillion over 2023-24.’

She stated ‘This is the biggest ever allocation for capital expenditure and it shows increase of about 17 per cent over the RE and provisional actuals of the FY 2023-24.’ She added that during the Congress-led UPA era, the capex allocation was Rs 13.19 trillion between 2004-05 to 2013-14. Moreover she said ‘Whereas during our tenure from 2014 to 2024, the allocation for capex has been Rs 43.82 trillion from 2014-15 to 2023-24.’