Finance Ministry Asks Twitter What It Must Focus on in Budget 2017

Arun Jaitley, Finance Minister, India. (Photo: PTI)

With less than a month remaining for budget presentation, Finance Ministry on Friday invited suggestions from Twitterati on what should be the focus of the Budget for 2017-18 to be unveiled on 1 February.

People can exercise their voting option on the official Twitter handle of the Ministry of Finance.

Although voting would remain open for a week, initial pattern suggested netizen's preference for agriculture, followed closely by infrastructure. Manufacturing was the third in preference followed by IT and Services.

In November 2016, the Finance Ministry had invited suggestions from public on myGov portal for Budget 2017-18 in order to encourage public participation and bring in greater transparency.

The government has decided to present the Budget for 2017-18 on 1 February , instead of the usual practice of unveiling it on the last working day of February, so that all allocations are available before the start of financial year from 1 April. It has also decided to merge the Rail Budget with the Union Budget.

(This article was originally published in BloombergQuint)