Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman chaired the pre-budget consultation meetings for Budget 2022-23 held in virtual mode from December 15 to 22.
More than 120 invitees representing 7 stakeholder groups participated in 8 meetings scheduled during this period. The stakeholder groups include representatives and experts from Agriculture and Agro Processing Industry; Industry, Infrastructure and Climate Change; Financial Sector and Capital Markets; Services and Trade; Social Sector; Trade Union & Labour Organization and Economists.
Union Ministers of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary and Dr. Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad, Finance Secretary T.V. Somanathan; Secretary, DEA, Ajay Seth; Secretary, DIPAM, Tuhin Kanta Pandey; Secretary, Financial Services, i Debashish Panda; Secretary, Corporate Affairs, Rajesh Verma; Secretary, Revenue Tarun Bajaj and senior officers from Ministry of Finance were also present during the meetings.
The stakeholder groups made several suggestions on various issues that included increased R&D spending, infrastructure status for digital services, incentives to hydrogen storage and fuel cell development, rationalisation of income tax slabs, investments in online safety measures etc., among others.
Finance Minister Smt. Sitharaman thanked the participants for sharing their valuable suggestions and assured that suggestions will be carefully considered while preparing the Budget 2022-23.
