The Union Budget provides an annual and unique opportunity to focus attention on the economy and how government policy is likely to affect the lives of India's 1.2 billion people in the coming year and beyond.    The heads of five leading Indian economic policy research institutes came together  to present their assessment of the reform and development implications of the Union Budget of 2009-10.

The seminar "Union Budget 2009-10: Reform and Development Perspectives" was held on July 11th, 2009 in New Delhi and attended by over 200 participants.   The expert panel included Shubhashis Gangopadhyay of the India Development Foundation (IDF), Rajiv Kumar of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER),  Suman Bery  of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), M. Govinda Rao of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) and Pratap Bhanu Mehta of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR).  The discussion was moderated by Sunil Jain, Group Senior Editor of the Business Standard, one of India's leading financial newspapers.

The Panel deliberated at length on a range of issues including the fiscal stimulus and the rising fiscal deficit implied by the Budget;  the possibility of interest rates going up as public borrowing increases and the impact of this on private investment;  the exit strategy once the stimulus is no longer needed, the importance of service delivery reforms that can begin to make a difference at the ground level; the impact of NREGS; and whether the budget should be a simple accounting exercise or a definitive statement of the government's policy intentions.  There was a lively interchange with the audience on all these issues, including almost unanimous support from the participants for the notion of the  budget continuing to be a comprehensive statement of economic policy intentions.

This was the third year running that the five institutes came together to present their assessment of the union budget.

A detailed seminar report put together by IDF and the presentations made can be viewed at:
Union Budget 2009-10: Reform and Development Perspectives