India's budget targets the poor

[dArKeR]

REUTERS , New Delhi
Friday, Jul 09, 2004,Page 5

Basanta Das, an Indian homeless man, begs for food on a pavement in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta yesterday. Tens of thousands of people live on the streets in Calcutta, often working as laborers. India's new communist-backed government unveils its annual federal budget yesterday, the first real test of it its pledge to increase spending on the poor while staying fiscally responsible.
PHOTO: REUTERS
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/photo/2004/07/09/2003139270

India's left-backed government vowed to foster investment to maintain strong economic growth and cut the fiscal deficit on yesterday in an expansionary first budget with billions of dollars of new spending for the poor.

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram's budget was less inflationary than some analysts had feared but, as expected, included no major measures to tackle a worrying fiscal deficit that is seen as a challenge to sustained high growth.

Instead, it relied largely on growth -- targeted at 7 to 8 percent for the year to March, 2005 -- to bring the deficit down to 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) from 4.6 percent.

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