PM asks for Budget suggestions as growth dips 11-yr low

With only three weeks remaining for the presentation of Union Budget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday sought suggestions from 130 crore Indians on the 2020-21 budget.

"The Union Budget represents the aspirations of 130 crore Indians and lays out the path towards India’s development. I invite you all to share your ideas and suggestions for this year’s Budget on MyGov," Modi tweeted this morning.

The development comes hours after the official estimate put India’s growth rate for the current financial year (2019-20) at an 11-year low of 5% and said that expenditure should be the key determinant of the economy because investment and capital had almost come to a standstill.

The official data released on Tuesday showed investment in the economy is expected to fall to 1% this year, implying the government has to do the heavy lifting in terms of giving an expenditure push to the economy.

The threat of oil prices rising in the wake of US-Iran tension has posed a new risk to the economy.

The prime minister’s call for suggestion is also significant in view of India aspiring to be a $5 trillion economy by 2025. However, the current rate of slowdown does not point towards that.

India’s largest public-sector State Bank of India, in a research, suggested that to become a $5 trillion economy, India’s GDP in 2020 should have grown by Rs 225 lakh crore and not at Rs 204 lakh crore as projected in the just-released official estimate of the growth numbers for 2019-20.