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The customary Halwa ceremony, marking the final stage of the budget preparation process for full Budget of 2025-26, is set to be held in North Block on Friday evening.
As is the convention, the ceremony will be led by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, with Minister of State Pankaj Chaudhary, and secretaries, in attendance. Officers and staff involved in the budget preparation and compilation process will also be present on the occasion. A customary Halwa ceremony is performed every year before the "lock-in" process of the budget preparation begins. The Halwa Ceremony is a preparation of the Indian sweet dish in a large 'kadhai' at the North Block. The Finance Minister ceremoniously stirs the 'kadhai' and generally serves the halwa to everyone involved in the Budget-making process. This tradition is also a way to acknowledge the hard work of all the finance ministry officials. The halwa ceremony heralds the process of printing all the budget documents ahead of the presentation in Parliament. The halwa ceremony is a significant event as it also marks the beginning of lockdown at the finance ministry. This means no official is allowed to leave the ministry compound. Everyone part of the Budget team is allowed to leave only after the financial document is presented in Parliament. The printing of the Union Budget inside the basement located at the North Block has become a permanent feature since 1980. The budget session of parliament will begin on January 31 and, according to schedule, will end on April 4. The budget will be presented on February 1. President Droupadi Murmu will address the joint sitting of two houses of Parliament on January 31. Parliament will have an inter-session break from February 14 and the two Houses of Parliament will resume their sittings on March 10. With this upcoming Budget Presentation, Sitharaman will have presented seventh budget. She has already surpassed the record set by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who presented five annual budgets and one interim budget between 1959 and 1964 as finance minister. Like the previous few full Union Budgets, the Budget 2025 will also be delivered in paperless form. All eyes will be on the key announcements and the government's forward-looking economic guidance for the remainder of the Modi 3.0 tenure. This upcoming budget comes in the backdrop of weak GDP numbers and weak consumption in the economy. The Indian economy grew by 5.4 per cent in real terms in the July-September quarter of the current financial year 2024-25. The quarterly growth was quite lower than RBI's forecast of 7 per cent. In the April-June quarter too, India's GDP grew at a slower pace than was estimated by its central bank. The Reserve Bank in its latest monetary policy had cut India's growth forecast for 2024-25 to 6.6 per cent from 7.2 per cent. The Economic Survey tabled in Parliament earlier this year "conservatively" projected India's real GDP growth at 6.5-7 per cent for 2024-25, acknowledging that market expectations are higher. Real GDP growth is the reported economic growth adjusted for inflation. India's GDP grew by an impressive 8.2 per cent during the financial year 2023-24, and continued to be the fastest-growing major economy. The economy grew by 7.2 per cent in 2022-23 and 8.7 per cent in 2021-22. (ANI)
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