Union minister for finance & corporate affairs Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday chaired the last of a series of pre-budget consultation meetings for the union budget 2021-22, interacting via virtual mode with 170 representatives of nine stakeholder groups

Pre-budget consultations, started on December 14, included 15 meetings, an official release said. The stakeholder groups included financial and capital markets, health, education and rural development, water and sanitation, trade union and labour organisations, industry, services and trade, infrastructure, energy and climate change sector, agriculture and agro processing industry, industrialists, and economists.

Minister of state for finance & corporate affairs Anurag Singh Thakur, finance secretary Dr A.B. Pandey, DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey, expenditure secretary T.V. Somanathan, DEA secretary Tarun Bajaj, chief economic advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian and senior officers from the ministry of finance and other ministries also participated in the meetings.

The stakeholder groups made several suggestions on various subjects that included fiscal policy, including taxation; bond markets; insurance; infrastructure spending; health and education budget; social protection; skilling; water harvesting and conservation; sanitation; MGNREGA; public distribution system; ease of doing business; production linked investment scheme, exports; branding of ‘Made in India’ products, public sector delivery mechanisms; innovation, green growth; non-polluting sources of energy and vehicles, among others.

The participants lauded the government’s efforts to flatten the COVID-19 curve and a strong recovery in economic growth in the second quarter of 2020-21, according to the official note. They further stated that India is among very few countries whose economic activity has risen with declining pandemic induced fatalities.

Sitharaman thanked the participants for sharing their valuable suggestions assuring that all suggestions will be carefully considered while preparing the budget 2021-22.