New Delhi: Presenting the interim Budget 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said to encourage sustained foreign direct investment, "We are negotiating bilateral investment treaties with our foreign partners, in the spirit of ‘first develop India". Highlighting Promoting investments in the Budget 2024, Sitharaman said, "FDI is- First, develop India...The FDI inflow during 2014-23 was USD 596 billion marking a golden era. That is twice the inflow during 2005-14. To encourage sustained foreign investment, we are negotiating bilateral investment treaties with our foreign partners, in the spirit of ‘first develop India’.
She noted that the recently announced India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor is a strategic and economic game changer for India and others.
In her Budget speech, Sitharaman said, 'Geopolitically, global affairs are becoming more complex and challenging with wars and conflicts. Globalization is being redefined with reshoring and friend-shoring, disruption and fragmentation of supply chains, and competition for critical minerals and technologies. A new world order is emerging after the Covid pandemic".
"India assumed the G20 Presidency during very difficult times for the world. The global economy was going through high inflation, high-interest rates, low growth, very high public debt, low trade growth, and climate challenges. The pandemic had led to a crisis of food, fertilizer, fuel, and finances for the world, while India successfully navigated its way. The country showed the way forward and built consensus on solutions for those global problems", she added.
Sitharaman pointed out that the recently announced India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor is a strategic and economic game changer for India and others. "In the words of Hthe Hon’ble Prime Minister, the corridor “will become the basis of world trade for hundreds of years to come, and history will remember that this corridor was initiated on Indian soil”, she further said.
This was an interim budget as it came just ahead of the Lok Sabha Elections. One of the key features of this year's budget is that no changes were announced in the tax slabs in both the old and new regimes.
This is Nirmala Sitharaman's sixth Union Budget. The full-fledged budget will be presented by the new government that comes to power after the elections.
The interim budget - a short-term financial plan - seeks Parliament's nod for a grant in advance to meet the government's essential expenditure for the first four months of the new financial year.
