Union budget 2023-24 contractionary, anti-people: CPI(M)

New Delhi: The CPI(M) on Wednesday said the Union budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for 2023-24 was “contractionary” and “anti-people”.
In a statement, the Left party said the budget came at a time when the Indian economy had already slowed down before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, worsened during the two pandemic years and the post-pandemic recovery was adversely impacted by the global economic slowdown moving towards a possible recession.
“Under these circumstances, this budget should have addressed the central issues of increasing people’s purchasing power with job generation and boosting the growth of domestic demand. This budget fails to meet this situation. On the contrary, it squeezes the government expenditures to reduce the fiscal deficit while giving further tax concession to the rich,” the Communist Party of India (Marxist) alleged.It said the budget comes at a time when the Oxfam report has shown that the richest one per cent of the population in India has cornered 40.5 per cent of the wealth generated in the last two years. Thus, it is a contractionary budget that will only aggravate the economic crisis, it claimed.
The party further said the increase in the total government expenditure for 2023-24 over the revised estimates for 2022-23 is a mere seven per cent, when the hike in the nominal GDP (with inflation) over the same period is estimated to be 10.5 per cent.