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Budget Highlights
It lists the key features of the Budget under various sub-heads. This document gives you an overview of the Budget.
Budget Speech
It contains the full speech of the Finance Minister (FM) while placing the Budget before Parliament.
Budget at a Glance
It is a snappy presentation of the Budget under broad heads — showing budgeted and actual figures for the key revenue and expenditure items. It contains vital information about revenue deficit, fiscal deficit and primary deficit. Additionally, it presents the key expenditure and tax proposals made in the Budget along with details of disbursements under various schemes and resource transfer to states. If you want a layman’s perspective of the Budget, look at this section for a good grasp of the Budget financials.
Annual Financial Statement (AFS)
It contains three statements — Consolidated Funds of India (CFI), Contingency Fund and Public Accounts. If your focus is to analyse the revenues and expenditures of the Government of India, analysing CFI Statement should suffice. Contingency fund reports urgent expenses, while public account gives details on collections (say, small saving collections) where the Government acts as a mere custodian.
Finance Bill
Finance Bill contains details on tax proposals and modifications. It is presented to Parliament immediately after the presentation of the Budget. Unless you are looking for specific amendments to a certain Financial Act, say, Income Tax Act or RBI Act, skip the section to directly look at the memorandum explaining the provisions of the Finance Bill.
Memorandum
Memorandum elucidates the provisions of the Finance Bill — usually with examples. Any ambiguity as to the provisions and its nitty-gritty should make you rush to this section.
Receipts Budget
The estimates of receipts included in AFS are further analysed in the Receipts Budget. It gives details of Revenue and Capital Receipts in addition to explaining its estimates. If you are looking for details of a receipt item, this is the place to look at. “Annexure” gives historical data of receipts and expenditure under various heads, which is useful – especially if you want to do away with data sourcing from Budget documents of each financial year. In addition, details on public debt — budgeted and revised figures — are found in this section.
Expenditure Budget
Expenditure Budget has two sections – Volume I and Volume II.
Expenditure Budget Volume I shows the revenue and capital expenditures (broad overview) under various ministries and departments. The budgeted and actual figures are further provided under heads Plan and Non-Plan.
The details in regard to expenditure for various ministries and departments are given in the Expenditure Budget Volume II. The explanations on expenditures proposed under various central programmes/schemes are also included in this section. The Annexure gives a list of schemes where the expense sharing ratio between central-state has been modified.
Customs & Central Excise
Notifications are usually issued to bring about changes to customs and central excise law as well as duty rates that are proposed in the Finance Bill.
Macro-economic Framework Statement
It is presented to Parliament under Section 3(5) of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBM), 2003. It contains assessment regarding the GDP growth rate, fiscal balance of the Central Government and the external sector balance of the economy.
Medium-term Fiscal Policy Statement
It sets out three-year rolling targets for four fiscal indicators in relation to GDP — Revenue Deficit, Fiscal Deficit, Tax to GDP ratio and Total outstanding Debt at the end of the year. This is an important section to get an overview on the fiscal targets.
Fiscal Policy Strategy Statement
It outlines the strategic priorities of the Government in the fiscal area for the ensuing financial year relating to taxation, expenditure, lending and investments, administered pricing, borrowings and guarantees. It explains how the current policies are in conformity with sound fiscal management principles and gives the rationale for any major deviation in key fiscal measures.
Statement of Revenue Foregone
It is an analysis of the revenue impact of tax incentives or subsidies that are a part of the tax system of the Central government. For instance, it gives details on effective corporate tax rate, and that of companies in the service and manufacturing sector. In addition, it gives budgeted figures of revenue impact of each major incentive doled out to the corporate sector as well as individuals.
Implementation of Budget Announcements
It gives details of the previous Budget announcements and the current status of implementation. If you are keen to look at the progress of last year’s Budget announcements, look here. However, it just states the status of implementation, often skipping the reasons for the delay and not stating the actual problem.
Economic Survey
The Economic Survey brings out the economic trends facilitating a better appreciation of the mobilisation of resources and their allocation in the Budget. It analyses the trends in agricultural and industrial production, infrastructure, employment, money supply, prices, trade, foreign exchange reserves and other economic factors which have a bearing on the Budget. It is usually presented to Parliament ahead of the Budget.
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