Lok Sabha Debates Presented A Statement Of The Estimated Receipts And Expenditure Of The ... on 1 February, 2020 Seventeenth Loksabha an> Title : Presented a statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the Government of India for the year 202021. UNION BUDGET, 202021* माननीय अध्यक्ष: मैं इस नए दशक के पहले आम बजट में आप सभी का अभिनन्दन करता हूं, स्वागत करता हूं। श्रीमती निर्मला सीतारमण जी, वर्ष 202021 के लिए भारत सरकार की अनुमानित प्राप्तियों और व्यय का विवरण प्रस्तुत करेंगी। THE MINISTER OF FINANCE AND MINISTER OF CORPORATE AFFAIRS (SHRIMATI NIRMALA SITHARAMAN): Sir, I rise, with your permission, to present a Statement* of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the Government of India for the year 20202021. I rise to present the Budget for the year 20202021. Sir, in May, 2019, Prime Minister Modi received a massive mandate to form the Government again. With renewed vigour, under his leadership, we commit ourselves to serve the people of India, with all humility and dedication. People of India have unequivocally given their janaadesh for not just political stability and also reposed faith in our economic policies. This is the Budget to boost their incomes and enhance their purchasing power. Only through higher growth, we can achieve that and have our youth gainfully and meaningfully employed. Let our businesses be innovative, healthy and solvent with use of technology. For today’s youth born at the turn of the century, for every member of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes who seeks a better life, for every woman wishing to stand up and get counted, for every individual from the minority sections of our society – this Budget aims to give and have your aspirations and hopes addressed. We wish to open up vistas for a vibrant and dynamic economy with a gentle breeze of new technology. This vibrant India shall be a caring society which shall attend to its weak, the old and the vulnerables among its citizens. During 201419, our government brought in a paradigm shift in governance. This shift was characterised by a twin focus: fundamental structural reform and inclusive growth. Fundamentals of the economy are strong and that has ensured macroeconomic stability. Inflation has been well contained. Banks saw a thorough cleaning up of accumulated loans of the past decade and then they were recapitalized. Companies were provided an exit through the IBC. Several steps on the formalisation of the economy were taken up. Of the structural reforms, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) has been the most historic in our country. Its chief architect is not with us today. I pay homage to the visionary leader late Shri Arun Jaitley ji. At the time of roll out of GST, he had said and I quote: “It will be an India where the Centre and States will work harmoniously towards the common goal of shared prosperity. The unanimity of the Constitutional amendment and the consensus of the GST Council highlights that India can rise above narrow politics for the nation’s interest. With the GST, neither the state nor the Centre loses its sovereignty. In contrast, they will pool their sovereignty on decisions on indirect taxes.” True to this vision for the historic structural reform, the Goods and Services Tax has been gradually maturing into a tax that has integrated the country economically. It has consolidated numerous taxes and cesses to one tax and facilitated formalization of the economy. It has resulted in the efficiency gains in logistic and transport sectors. The turnaround time for trucks has witnessed a substantial reduction to the tune of twenty per cent due to abolition of check posts in GST. The dreaded InspectorRaj has also vanished. It has also led to significant benefits to MSME by way of enhanced threshold and composition limits. The effective tax incidence on almost every commodity came down substantially. Through several rate reductions, an annual benefit of one lakh crore rupees has been extended to consumers. It amounts to ten per cent reduction in overall tax incidence. An average household now saves about four per cent of its monthly spends on account of reduced GST rates. During this phase of maturing, GST did face certain challenges. This was natural as transition was daunting. GST Council has been proactive in resolving issues during the tran