New Delhi: Piyush Goyal, the interim finance minister, presented the 2019-20 budget to parliament, in the absence of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is currently in the United States for medical treatment.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is expected to try and shore up its political support with big ticket farm giveaways and tax cuts for the middle class in its final federal budget on Friday, months before elections.

Here are the updates:

* In last five years, India has been universally acknowledged as a growing economy. Today India is the 6th largest economy in the world.

* Major reforms have taken place in taxes, banking, bankruptcy law.

* Questionable practices in banking stopped. Clean banking introduced.

* Rs 3 lakh crore recovered from defaulters to restore banking health.

* Era of transparency introduced in many fields, including in real estate.

* Inflation controlled or families would have spent 35 to 40 per cent more on daily use items. 

* NDA govt contained double digit inflation; government has broken the back of high inflation. 

* India attracted USD 239 billion n in FDI in last five years.

* Fiscal deficit will be 3.4 per cent of GDP; Current Account Deficit to be 2.5 per cent of GDP.

* Path-breaking structural reforms by introduced like GST.

* FDI liberalised FDI allowing more investment through automatic route. 

* Culture of phone banking stopped. Goyal refers to allegations of rampant loans over phone during UPA regime.

* This government had the guts to ask RBI to look at bad loans and present correct picture to nation. 

* BoI, OBC and Bank of Maharashtra have been removed from the PCA framework of RBI. 

* Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code is helping in recovery of non-performing loans. Even big businessmen are now worried about loans

* We have run a corruption-free government.  

* India has achieved over 98 per cent rural sanitation coverage.

* Hope other banks too would soon come out of PCA framework.

* Poor have the first right over nation's resources.

* We have worked to bridge the urban-rural divide. 

* 2016 Realty Law RERA has helped in bringing transparency in real estate sector.

* Government t has provided 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker section, job quota to provide 2 lakh seats in educational institutions.

* Government announces the Pradhan Mantri Samman Nidhi for small and marginal farmers; farmers to get Rs 6,000 per year.

* Government spent Rs 1.7 lakh crore to supply food grains at cheaper price to poor in 2018-19 as against Rs 92,000 crore in 2013-14.  

* Farmers to be provided Rs 6,000 per year in three instalments, fully funded by the central government.

* About 5.4 lakh villages made open defecation-free.

* Allocation to MNREGA hiked to Rs 60,000 crore for 2019-20.

Modi is facing growing discontent over depressed farm incomes and doubts over whether his policies are creating enough jobs. A local media report on Thursday quoted a government survey as saying the jobless rate was the highest in at least 45 years, putting further pressure on the government.

The government is set to step up rural welfare spending by 16 per cent for the fiscal year beginning April to 1.3 trillion rupees (USD 18.25 billion), two government sources said, aiming to boost support in the countryside where more than two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people live.

The budget, which is interim and is likely to be followed by a full one in July, is expected to project economic growth of around 7.5 per cent for the next financial year, while expanding capital spending on railways, roads, ports by 7-8 per cent, and estimating an increase in revenue of about 15 per cent, officials said.

Stung by opposition parties’ victories in three state polls in December and needing to call a national election by May, Modi has already exempted many small businesses from paying taxes under a unified goods and services tax (GST).

The government is now considering raising the income level at which people need to pay personal tax, long a demand for the country’s influential middle class.

“The pressure to further expand the farmer welfare programme ahead of the 2019 elections is high for PM Modi,” said CLSA India.

More than 900 million people will be eligible to cast votes in the world’s biggest ever democratic exercise and the pressure to woo them is intense.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the main opposition Congress party, is closing in on Modi’s lead, according to polls. His promise of a minimum income for the poor has increased pressure on the government to make populist announcements in its budget.

The electoral compulsions mean that major economic reforms, such as tax cuts for bigger companies and plans to bring down the budget deficit, could be put on hold at least until after the election, government sources said.

The higher spending, along with a shortfall in tax collections, will push the fiscal deficit up to the equivalent of 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product for the year ending in March, overshooting a previous 3.3 per cent target, according to one of the sources with direct knowledge of budget discussions.

That would fit with the expectations of a Reuters poll of economists.

The source said there was a chance that the government could take corrective action in March, with an expectation that the election schedule will be settled by that time and that public focus will shift to campaigning.

“In our view, with the upcoming polls gaining precedence, fiscal consolidation is likely to take a back seat,” said Nirmal Bang, a brokerage.