Budget 2024: Meet Finance Secretary TV Somanathan, mind behind capex push to cleaner balance sheet

Finance Secretary TV Somanathan

TV Somanathan was appointed Secretary, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance back in December 2019. After which, the 1987-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer from the Tamil Nadu Cadre was in April 2021 designated Finance Secretary, a designation given to the senior-most officer among all secretaries in the ministry.

The Finance Secretary will be a key player in shaping the interim Budget, which will be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1.

Previously a joint secretary in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MoCA), between 2015 and 2017, Somanathan was in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) looking after the implementation of economic policies. He is currently also the chairman of the committee reviewing the pension system for government employees.

The IAS officer holds a doctorate in Economics and is a qualified chartered accountant (CA), cost accountant, and company secretary. He has published over 80 papers and articles on economics in journals and newspapers, finance and public policy, and is the author of two books as well as chapters in several others. He has also worked as Director at the World Bank, Washington D.C on deputation from the IAS.

Considered to be popular among his colleagues, Somanathan's Department of Expenditure is responsible for pushing the government's capital expenditure to record levels in a bid to boost growth and employment.

The officer was also one of the key architects behind the 2021-22 Budget that discontinued the practice of extra-budgetary borrowing from that fiscal year. This was an attempt to clean up the central government’s balance sheets.

Somanathan was responsible for spearheading several policies when the centre’s revenues were hit due to the pandemic, especially during 2020 and 2021, including enforcing expenditure curbs on various ministries and departments across the central government. He is also considered to have played a key role in implementing flagship schemes such as ‘PM Gareeb Kalyan’ and ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’, which were announced during the first wave of COVID-19.