Finance minister Arun Jaitley says that the government will stick to the fiscal glide path if voted back to power

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on April 4 that if the Narendra Modi administration is voted back to power, it will maintain the current fiscal deficit glide path.

As per the current medium-term fiscal policy, which is part of the 2019-20 interim budget, the fiscal deficit target for 2019-20 is 3.4 per cent, and 3 per cent for both 2020-21 and 2021-22.

“Irrespective of global trends our own domestic consumption is going to increase. I speak in terms of policies, I speak in terms of taxation policies for example I am quite clear in my mind that on two issues at least we had a lot of good fiscal prudence and we brought the rates down, these are two areas, if we are in power we will continue the same glide path,” Jaitley said at the annual summit of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in New Delhi.

“If back in office for the next five years, we have to set our targets clear,” he said.

Jaitley also hinted that cement, which is in the 28 per cent goods and services tax (GST) bracket, will be brought down to a lower bracket soon. “In the last 20-odd months of the GST, except for cement, every item of consumption has come down to 18 per cent and 12 per cent from 28 percent so it is only a matter of time that the last one also comes down,” he said.

The finance minister also slammed the critics of electoral bonds and called the debate an ill-informed one. “I regret that the whole debate on electoral bonds is an ill-informed one. The earlier system was opaque who the donor was, who the intermediary was, who the political party benefitting was, none of these were known. Every stage was non-transparent. While the Election Commission has succeeded in many areas, they haven't been able to control cash. Electoral bonds are a reasonably transparent step,” he said.

“The only non-transparent part is that only you know who you are distributing the electoral bonds to. Now if you ask people to disclose who they are donating to through electoral bonds, I am sure the system of cash will be back,” the finance minister said.

On Wednesday, the government opposed in the Supreme Court the concerns raised by the Election Commission on issuing electoral bonds and justified the changes in law saying it was "a pioneer step" to bring poll reforms "ensuring transparency" and “accountability” in political funding.