There won’t be a populist Budget: NITI Aayog Vice Chairman

New Delhi, Jan 10 : NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar on Wednesday dismissed concerns of fiscal slippage and said the next Union Budget will not be a populist one.

“There shouldn’t be a fear of fiscal risk because of slippage, because if at all, a fiscal slippage happens, it would only be for the right reasons.

“Fear would be if you had a situation where the government was going to be populist, splurging and cutting taxes here and there. That would have been the cause of fear,” Rajiv Kumar told BTVI in an interview.

“But you can be assured that with this government, and this Prime Minister, that sort of irresponsibility will never happen,” he said.

The NITI Aayog added that the current government had “never made a populist budget, will never make a populist budget and will never like to buy votes”.

“If you have used your extra borrowings for generating productive capacities which will push growth up and for undertaking structural reforms which will bring about such amazing positive effects on GDP as a whole… These are the right reasons.”

Rajiv Kumar said it’s been six months into the GST era and revenues will rise in the coming months.

“If we are taking time to stabilise and revenues are dropping… You know that these revenues will rise in the coming months,” he said.

He also expressed confidence on the Foreign Direct Investments front and said there would be a lot of investment coming to India.

“As the ease of doing business improves, as you get more and more states getting onto that bandwagon, as you get GST being stabilised and cleaned up… You will see that all those who want to do clean business and who want to do business in which they can live by the rules and work by the rules will all get attracted towards India.

“Hence I see a very good year ahead for our private investors,” he added.

IANS