Finance Minister P. Chidambaram deserves kudos for making the best of patently bad situation in the Union Budget 2013-14.
A Budget can do only so much, said Anuradha Balram, Chief Economic Adviser and director of project planning cell at State Planning Board.
She said while participating in a panel discussion involving mostly dissenting members held as part of Budget 2013 analysis here.
The event was hosted by KPMG in India, Asian School of Business (ASB) and the Kerala State Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry.
G. Vijaya Raghavan, member, State planning board, and member-secretary, ASB, moderated the session.
The Budget is a fiscal policy document at best and it is foolhardy to expect it to be a one-stroke remedy for all ills afflicting the economy.
Getting down to specifics, she said there is a clear emphasis in the Budget on the need to perk up the investment climate.
The Finance Minister has also said that the current account deficit needs to be squarely dealt with by encouraging FDI and exports.
PLAN SPENDS
While announcing some measures to this effect, he has left much of the rest to be taken up in the Exim policy to be announced soon.
Balram agreed with other speakers that she would have liked to see a pruning down on non-plan expenditure rather than plan expenditure in revised estimates.
But she also made the point that not all plan expenditures meant good spends just as some non-plan spends have been found to stimulate growth.
Plan and non-plan expenditures are ambiguous terms at best and could differ only in the manner they are deployed and benefited from.