Russell Gaitonde, Deloitte, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Russell Gaitonde, Partner at Deloitte said, “This year’s budget was a fairly difficult act that the government had to achieve given that this year was a very unusual one with the global pandemic. The economy needed a lot of fiscal stimulus to get back on the path of recovery and i am glad that the hon’ble finance minister has gone down the path of giving the requisite fiscal stimuluses in terms of the investments proposed to be made in the infrastructure sector as well as the PSU divestments plans and recapitalisation of PSB banks. It is a road map that the FM has put out saying that the government intends to bring down the fiscal deficit to 4.9% by FY26. It’ll take around 5 years for the government to bring down the fiscal deficit but clearly there is an intention and path they have in mind.”

He added, “If you look at the budget in terms of balancing the books, the FM had to raise funds from somewhere. One option was to either increase the taxes or to effectively do it by way of a divestment plan. Had there been an increase in taxes which the FM has not done, there would have been a lot of human cry and created a negative sentiment. To balance that out the plan of the government is to go down the path of disinvestments which is the right thing to do.”