“In her shortest budget speech that lasted 87 minutes, the sweet spot, without doubt, was the capex intensity budgeted by the Finance Minister. Spurred by a tax bonanza, thanks to formalization of the economy and inflation, the FM accelerated the capex run-rate. Apart from the central investment, states have been allocated a higher share of money with incentives in place to generate a higher spend on capex.
Even though this was the last budget before elections, it’s not been a populist one, with total expenditure estimated to rise by just 9% yoy. This is justified as a large part of spending and expenditure growth took place during the two years of Covid. Subsidies too have been cut after a big rise in last couple of years.
