NEW DELHI — India’s finance minister announced the government’s new budget on Saturday, promising a slew of measures that attempt to balance welfare spending with high economic growth and infrastructure development, while vowing to keep a tight control on fiscal deficit.
It was Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s first full budget since Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a thumping majority in national elections in May on the back of promises to turn around the economy and boost job creation.
There were few sweeping reforms that the government has been promising, but economists and business leaders reacted to Saturday’s announcement with cautious optimism, a far cry from Jaitley’s first interim budget in July, which was widely panned.
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“We need to cut subsidy leakages, not subsidies themselves,” he said, adding that the subsidies needed to be targeted better.
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