IN the Budget day presentation, today,  Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called on President Ram Nath Kovind before presenting the Union Budget 2021-22. As per established tradition, the Finance Minister met the President at the Rashtrapati Bhawan before heading to Parliament.

Also before the actual presentation, the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will approve the Budget for the fiscal year 2021-22. While traditionally, copies of the Budget are brought to the Parliament complex before finance minister arrives, this year due to Covid scare, no document has been printed following the COVID-19 protocol.

Instead, the Budget copies will be disseminated electronically, with documents being uploaded on the government website as well as being made available on a special app developed for the same.

Optimism is running high as Sitharaman presents her third budget in the Lok Sabha on Monday. She has her task cut out to fire up a pandemic battered economy and revive the animal instinct in it.

On the first day of the budget session of Parliament, Sitharaman on Friday tabled the pre-budget Economic Survey for 2020-21, which projected a 'V'-shaped recovery for the economy in the next financial year. The economy is projected to contract by 7.7 percent in the current fiscal ending March 31, 2021 and expanding by 11 percent in the next.

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