Budget 2021 thread

Overall impression: predictable (but clean), business as usual (sigh) budget with not many harmful actions and marginal stimulus. A good budget vis a vis the last however many, but not really a big "Budget of Hope."

1/ Tl;dr: hawkish, deficit mostly from revenue loss, decent increase in CapEx, good increase in health, good privatization, but increased tariffs/"Atmanirbhar" protectionism.

Multi-year programs and consequent implementation questions. "Atmanirbhar", "digital" said 20 times?

2/

This is very interesting especially in the context of the debate on who should borrow (particularly to make up GST shortfalls). So far, states say center gets a better rate. Center says its deficit is too high. 1/

https://twitter.com/dugalira/status/1314429016569335808

Meanwhile, in non-COVID times there was an effort to create differentiated rates for different states. Rationale being: why should, say, Maharashtra or TN pay the same rate on debt as UP despite distinctly better fiscal performance. 2/

Thoughts on tranche 1 of India's "Rs. 20 trillion" ($267bn) stimulus package:

1. The actual stimulus package will be worth Rs. 11.1 lakh crores, but was deceptively announced as 20, including RBI quantitative easing and previous stimulus of ~1.6 lakh crores

1/N 2. Tranche I of the package announced by @FinMinIndia @nsitharaman @nsitharamanoffc, afaik, is worth Rs. 557,000 Cr ($72.4 bn)—2.7% of GDP. So, it isn't really "10% of GDP" being spent right now.

2/