Budget basics explained: The what when who and why

As the Union Budget 2022 approaches, Editorji takes a look at the basic details and concepts:

What is a union budget?

The union budget is the annual financial statement prepared by the Finance Ministry that includes budgeted receipts and expenditures of the government for a fiscal year. A fiscal year starts from April 1 and ends on March 31.

Details of the event

The budget is presented at around 11 AM on February 1 by the finance minister of India. The current finance minister of India is Nirmala Sitharaman. The budget used to be presented on the last day of February before 2016.

The budget speech

The presentation could last anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes. The longest presentation by the finance minister was of two hours and 40 minutes in 2020 budget speech.

The two parts of the budget

Broadly there are two parts of the budget. The first one includes the prevailing economic condition and the budgeted expenditure of the government for the upcoming financial year. While the second part includes taxes pr we can say the second part is about personal finance and the government's budgeted revenue.

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