Union Budget 2019: Meet the minds behind the mega exercise

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who has earlier held Commerce and Defence portfolios, is all set to present her the Union Budget 2019, which has been months in the making.

(Click here for live updates of Budget 2019)

The preparations for the Budget started soon after Modi government 2.0 took charge and the exercise has been spearheaded by the following people, aided by finance ministry officials:

Nirmala Sitharaman

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, 59, brings to the table her knowledge of economics, political acumen, organizational and administrative skills, as well as insights into the needs of various sections of industry. Having served in the finance ministry earlier as the junior minister under Arun Jaitley will come in handy for Sitharaman. Experience in her earlier roles handling the commerce and defence portfolios will help her balance the demand for scarce resources for competing objectives.

To revive the economy with robust policy measures without digressing from the fiscal consolidation path will be a tough call for Sitharaman, reports livemint.com.

Subhash Chandra Garg

He is the most crucial bureaucrat in the Budget team. Garg’s predicaments are obvious. In a fiscally tight year when slow economic growth has led to sluggish revenue collection, the government would have needed a sizeable transfer from the RBI to fund its ambitious social sector schemes and meet the fiscal deficit target of 3.4% of GDP. Garg will find it difficult to match the revenue and expenditure sides of his second full budget while keeping the fiscal math credible. For details go to livemint.com

Ajay Bhushan Pandey

Revenue secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey, an engineer with over three decades of administrative experience, has been the face of the government’s efforts to promote and to defend Aadhaar, the unique identification project that is now extensively used for targeted delivery of state benefits to individuals. Pandey is a graduate in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Minnesota. (For full Budget coverage visit livemint.com)

Atanu Chakraborty

Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) secretary Atanu Chakraborty has the big task of generating additional revenues for the government’s coffers in a fiscally tight year. Sitharaman may even make the task tougher for him by further increasing the ₹90,000 crore target in the interim Budget for stake sales in public sector units in 2019-20..

Krishnamurthy Subramanian

The chief economic adviser presented his first Economic Survey on Thursday. After the stellar Surveys presented by his predecessor Arvind Subramanian, the CEA had a tough act to follow. He is a key player in Budget preparation.