Subsidies Need Not Be Cut For Fiscal Discipline: Nirmala Sitharaman To NDTV Profit In First Budget Interview

The government took off all the pressure of price rise from the farmers' shoulders, Sitharaman told NDTV Profit's Sanjay Pugalia in an exclusive and the first interview to a TV news channel after Budget 2024.

"Our initiatives are not about populism or entitlement but of empowerment," Sitharaman said, "Don't believe in handholding people in a way which hampers their own decision-making. We will do welfare spending for healthcare and education."

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the interim budget 2024, in which the subsidy spend is trimmed to Rs 3.81 lakh crore for FY25 as compared with Rs 4.13 lakh crore for FY24.

The government also remained committed to its fiscal consolidation by pegging FY25 fiscal deficit target at 5.1%, with an aim to reduce it to 4.5% by FY26. The finance minister said that the FY24 fiscal deficit is estimated at 5.8% of GDP, below the budgeted 5.9%.

The government's focus on infrastructure continued in the budget as capex spending rose 17% over the revised estimate of FY24 to over Rs 11 lakh crore. Sitharaman also announced a plan to set up a Rs 1 lakh crore corpus to back innovation.