Budget 2012

By Vijay Kumar

TODAY DDT brings you some interesting aspects of the Budget, which do not get the kind of publicity that a small increase in Rail fare done after eight years or a miniscule excise duty on gold jewellery.

Our Huge Expenditure

Do you know on what item we spend most of our money? People believe it is Defence. Wrong!. Our major item of expenditure is interest payments and debt servicing!!!. In 2011-12, this expenditure amounted to Rs.2,75,618 Crores and is budgeted for Rs.3,19,759 Crores in 2012-13 – and this is three times the Budget of a large State. Our Defence Budget for 2011-12 was Rs.1,70,937 Crores and in the coming year it will be Rs.1,93,407 Crores.

The total expenditure for the GOI for 2011-12 was Rs.13,18,720 Crores of which Rs.11,61,940 Crores was revenue expenditure and just Rs.1,56,780 Crores was capital expenditure. This means that in the current year, we spent 88% on sundry unproductive expenditure while our capital expenditure that is building up assets was just 12 percent. The future is not any brighter. In 2012-13 we are to spend Rs.12,86,109 Crores on Revenue expenditure and Rs.2,04,816 Crores on capital expenditure out of a total expenditure of about 15 Lakh Crores.

Tax Revenue through the years: In Crores

The Gross Tax Revenue is all set to cross 10 Lakh Crores next year and the Service Tax will cross One Lakh Crores.

Tax Foregone: Revenue Forgone on account of Export Promotion Concession