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Congress MP Manickam Tagore on Tuesday termed the union budget as "hollow" and said senior ministers were not present in Lok Sabha during Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's reply to the debate.
"It is very unfortunate that the top ministers were absent, HM was absent, Defence Minister was absent, Health Minister was absent...It shows the non-seriousness of the Budget. Meanwhile Opposition parties, particularly LoP Rahul Gandhi, DMK leader TR Baalu, Akhilesh Yadav, all of us were present. But the Government is not taking the Budget seriously. We know that this was a hollow Budget," Tagore told ANI. "This Budget was not for the people, it was only to do politics over the Opposition parties' ruled states. She always gives political speeches in the Budget," he added. In her reply, Sitharaman countered opposition allegations and said capital budget outlays have not come down. She said that the government is using almost the entire borrowed resources for financing effective capital expenditure. The minister, who was replying to a marathon debate in Lok Sabha on 2025-26 budget, said that effective capital expenditure is projected at 15.48 lakh crore as against 13.18 lakh crore in the revised esitmates of 2024-25. She said the effective capital expenditure for 2025-26 is 4.3 per cent of GDP as compared to fiscal deficit target of 4.4 per cent. Capital expenditure, or capex, is used to set up long-term physical or fixed assets. Effective capital expenditure includes core capital outlays and the grants in aid to states for creation of capital assets. Though the grants in aid for creation of capital assets is accounted in Budget as revenue expenditure, they go for creating capital assets in the states, she said. The difference between the two is minimal, she said explaining that it indicates that government is using almost the entire borrowed resources for financing effective capital expenditure. "The borrowings are not going for revenue expenditure or committed expenditure or any of those kinds. It's going only for creating capital assets. So in effect, the government intends to use about 99 per cent of borrowed resources to finance effective capital expenditure in the upcoming 2025-26 financial year," she said. (ANI)
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