Budget 2013 Factbox: Expectations from P. Chidambaram

Budget 2013: Finance Minister P. Chidambaram will deliver on Thursday the budget for the 2013/14 fiscal year that starts on April 1.

Chidambaram is expected to push fiscal consolidation through spending cuts while looking to increase revenues to ward off the threat of a credit rating downgrade.

P Chidambaram's logs

P Chidambaram faces moment of truth on Union Budget

Following are expectations from economists, analysts, investors and companies from the budget.

FISCAL DEFICIT

* Government target seen at 4.8 percent of gross domestic product for 2013/14

* Government has revised 2012/13 target to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 5.1 percent estimated in the budget in March.

GROWTH

* Government's GDP growth forecast for 2013/14 seen at 6 to 6.5 percent, compared with a decade-low of 5 percent in 2012/13 according to estimates released by the ministry of statistics. The finance minister has said the economy should expand 5.5 percent in 2012/13.

BORROWING

* Analysts expect net government borrowing below 5 trillion rupees ($92.4 billion) in FY14, little changed from 4.67 trillion rupees in FY13

SUBSIDIES

* Total subsidy burden seen falling by 400 billion-500 billion rupees from estimated 2.6 trillion rupees in FY13

* Ratio of subsidy payments to GDP seen below 2 percent by the end of 2013/14, compared with preliminary expectations of about 2.5 percent in 2012/13

* FY14 food subsidy bill seen between 850 billion and 1 trillion rupees versus 750 billion rupees budget estimates for current year

* Likely to cut fertiliser subsidy by at least 15 percent for 2013/14

SPENDING

* Finance minister plans to cut FY14 public spending target by up to 10 percent from FY13's original target Of 14.9 trillion rupees

... contd.

ALSO READ

FinMin probing pipe imports from China, Italy

After lull, highway projects see aggressive bid offers

Govt aims to bring down CAD to 2.5% by 12th Plan-end, says Montek

Raghuram Rajan not in favour of sovereign bond to finance CAD