Union Budget exercise kicked off

The Union finance ministry has kicked off the exercise for preparation of the Union Budget for the fiscal year 2012-13 and has asked all ministries to rush proposals by October 31 for inclusion in the second supplementary budget for 2011-12 to be presented in the winter session of Parliament.

Bureaucrats, who were holding back the process because of the political uncertainty created by the alleged tiff between Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P Chidambaram, have swung into action after seeing their minister safe in the saddle.

Once the budget-making exercise begins, the finance minister is not changed and as such the start of the exercise indicates there is no possibility of Mukherjee vacating the finance minister's seat at least until May when the Budget will be passed by Parliament.

. . .

The exercise began with finance secretary R S Gujral convening the first budget meeting with the joint secretaries in his chamber on how to proceed further.

He was told that an 80-page book -- called Budget Circular -- detailing the requirements of estimates of expenditure and receipts, has already been sent out to all ministries to rush their demands.

. . .

The ministries have been asked to furnish the list of demands for grants and once these are received and tabulated, the finance ministry will be communicating to the ministries to prepare their final demands based on the ceilings it prescribes and the Plan expenditure approved by the Planning Commission.

Sources said this preliminary exercise was completed last year by October 20, but it may be delayed and completed only by early November as the ministry is also taking into account the slowdown of economy impacting the revenue receipts the government was expecting in the current year.