New Delhi:The Union Budget 2023-24 will be presented on February 1 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman as country's economy is on track to recovery after the pandemic and registered a growth of 9.7 per cent in the first half of 2022-23 making it well-positioned to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2028-29. Amid all this, the entire country is awaiting the presentation of the budget for this financial year.
The budget-making process is mostly the domain of bureaucrats, who pitch in their opinions to formulate the financial document for the country.
Let us take a look at the team behind the Union Budget 2023-24
T V Somanathan, Finance Secretary
A 1987 batch IAS officer from the Tamil Nadu cadre was earlier a Joint Secretary to the Minister of Corporate Affairs and with the Prime Minister office (PMO) from 2015 to 2017. Under him, capital expenditure has surged and efforts are also on to boost the CapEx of states. Somanathan holds a doctorate in economics and is also a qualified Chartered Accountant (CA) Cost Accountant and Company Secretary.
The official has published over 80 papers and articles in journals and newspapers on economics, finance and public policy, and is the author of two books and chapters in several others.
Ajay Sethi:The Karnataka cadre 1987 batch IAS officer is one of the most significant members of the Finance Minister’s team, as the Budget division, which collates all data, is under his watch. Seth also has the additional responsibility of co-hearing the G20 central bank and Finance Minister’s meetings. The soft-spoken Seth is a mechanical engineer and a post-graduate in management.
Vivek Johri, CBIC Chairman : Vivek Johri is the chairman of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and customs (CBIC) and special secretary to the Government of India. An IRS (customs and indirect taxes officer of the 1985 batch, Johri has served in a number of roles encompassing the entire gamut of indirect tax administration, especially in policy formulation. His tenure as Member (GST): Saw many important changes carried out in GST law and procedure, both for easing the compliance burden on taxpayers and tighter enforcement for tackling tax evasion.
Tuhin Kanta Pandey:As Secretary of the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), Pandey has sought to temper expectations on the government’s disinvestments next fiscal year. Remember, in recent years, the government has repeatedly revised downwards its planned disinvestment targets because of the COVID-19 pandemic and as several planned sales took longer than expected or never came to be. The 1987-batch IAS officer from the Odisha cadre gets credit for completing the long-pending sale of national carrier Air India and for listing the national insurer the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC).
Nitin Gupta:Nitin Gupta is a 1986 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, who heads the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) the administrative body of the income tax department. Gupta is currently serving as a member (Investigation) in the CBDT.
V Anantha Nageswaran: Nageswaran was named Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) days before the Budget for 2022-23 was presented. As such, with a full year on the job, Nageswaran will not only be a key player in the making of the Budget for 2023-24, but will also spearhead the drafting of the Economic Survey for 2022-23, which will be tabled in Parliament the day before the budget is presented.
Nageswaran has a PhD in Finance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where his dissertation was on the behaviour of exchange rates, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. An author of four books, Nageswaran served as a part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister from 2019 to 2021. He has also taught at business schools and management institutes in India and Singapore and spent 17 years in the corporate sector working with the likes of UBS, Credit Suisse and Julius Baer.
Vivek Joshi:The new face in the highest echelons of the Finance Ministry, Joshi was appointed Secretary of the Department of Financial Services on October 19 to fill the vacancy created by Sanjay Malhotra replacing Tarun Bajaj as the Revenue Secretary following the latter’s retirement. Before taking charge as the Financial Services Secretary, Joshi was the Registrar General and Census Commissioner in the Ministry of Home Affairs and also served as CEO of the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority.
Joshi, however, is well versed in the inner workings of North Block, having been a Joint Secretary in the Department of Expenditure from November 2014 to April 2017. A 1989- batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, Joshi has a PhD and MA in International Economics from the Geneva Graduate Institute. Before that, he earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, where he was also part of the table tennis team.
Sanjay Malhotra, Revenue Secretary: Secretary Sanjay Malhotra, a 1990-batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre, was recently shifted to the Revenue Department from the Department of Financial Services. Among his key challenges for the budget would be to ensure that the projections are not wide off the mark — the finance ministry has, in the past, faced flak for overly optimistic or conservative revenue expectations. Malhotra, who has, in the past, worked as Chairman and Managing Director of state-run REC, will benefit from the recent buoyancy in tax collections, but would have to negotiate tricky terrain when it comes to states’ expectations, especially on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) compensation front.
