Fiscal discipline to play important role in Budget: Bhartia

The all important Budget session kickstarted today and it promises to be a stormy affair. Crucial economic bills on land acquisition, FDI in insurance and pension, food security are slated to be passed.

Shobhana Bhartia, Chairperson, Hindustan Times Group, in an interview to CNBC-TV18 said there are 39 bills to be passed in the session and the government is likely to introduce 20-25 new bills but much depends on whether the parliament functions smoothly or not. The general sense is that government managers of the floor are hopeful that they will see some fruitful business being transacted during this important session
Read more: A snapshot of key market expectations from Budget 2013 She believes that fiscal discipline will play an important role in this Budget. Below is the verbatim transcript of her interview on CNBC-TV18 Q: What are your expectations from this session of parliament and which bills do you expect to get through? A: This is a very important session of parliament because it maybe the last big session that we see before the elections. The government has a very tall agenda for this session; there are 39 bills which are waiting to be passed, which have been introduced. Also there are another 20-25 bills which the government proposes to introduce in this session. The first thing is the role of the opposition, the government is banking on getting some sort of cooperation from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) primarily to be able to see the passage for lot of these important bills. There are many important bills. One, the land acquisition bill. Two, the food security bill, which United Progressive Alliance (UPA II) has been working on for so many years and finally, it is now going to the parliament. They hope to see the passage of this bill as well. There are many other gender sensitive bills, which post the traumatic rape case, have become extremely important. The promulgation of the ordinance now has to be taken up by parliament and the criminal act bill has to be modified. In addition to that you have the pension and the insurance bills. Moreover, I do not know what the latest position is on the Goods and Services Tax (GST), but the last few weeks have seen some positive movement on that front as well with Sushil Modi actually meeting the Finance Minister. From what one hears it seems like the BJP is finally coming around. If that happens with some luck perhaps in the later part of this session, one may see the government even introducing that bill. Therefore there are lots of important legislations that are pending, 39 of them have already been introduced. There is also the women's reservation.
So there are lots and lots of these bills pending but much depends on whether the parliament functions smoothly or not. Except for the first few days, which are bound to be rocky, the general sense is and the government managers of the floor are hopeful that they will see some fruitful business being transacted during this important session. Q: A word on the Budget because reports indicate that the Prime Minister this time around is fully behind the Finance Minister. Apparently he has appealed to other ministries not to dissent with Finance Minister and let him have his way in how he wants to shape the Budget. Politically, what do you expect to see from the Budget? Economically as well do you expect it to be very austere in nature? A: I think the Finance Minister will walk the talk and you will see fiscal discipline playing a very central and an important role in his Budget. He has been saying so, and I think he will deliver on that. Since, we are very close to the general elections, so the Budget will have to be populist in nature as well. From where he will get the revenues, to be able to put in the money for all the social sector spending is something that we will have to see. However, the Finance Minister is being very strongly backed by the Prime Minister. The various ministries have been told not to expect huge rises in their Budgets. In fact there is talk of some reduction in Budgets like the defence Budget. The gross budgetary support is not expected to go up by a huge amount and the various ministries will have to live within the existing Budget. Moreover, he will be given a free hand to try and deliver what he thinks is going to be a tight rope walk, in trying to deliver on some of the social schemes which will entail a lot of spending. The FM would also have to try and garner as much revenue because he would like to bring down the fiscal deficit in the coming Budget, from the previous Budget. It is said, that he wants to peg it at 4.7-4.8 percent, so we will have to see what he really announces. However, to do that it is going to be a lot of fine-tuning on his part and I believe he is being firmly supported by the Prime Minister on this.