Budget 2022: FM Nirmala Sitharaman delivers shortest ever budget speech today, breaks her own record

Budget presentation is an important event that is watched over by policy experts, businessmen and every commoner because it affects the overall financial planning of every household. While you saw the Union Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman delivering the budget 2022 today, did you know that it was the shortest budget speech ever!

The finance minister has presented four budgets. This year, she spoke for about one and a half hours only. This marks the shortest-ever budget speech as against long budget speeches that were delivered in 2019 and 2021.

India’s budget presentation is known for being overtly long as an average speech lies between 90 to 120 minutes. The longest budget speech till date was delivered by current Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while presenting the Union Budget 2020-21 on February 1, 2020. The speech took a total of 2 hours and 42 minutes, in the middle of which Sitharaman felt unwell.

The remaining speech was then delivered by the speaker. This speech was lengthier than the 2 hours and 17 minutes long speech that she delivered in July 2019.

Shortest and longest budget speech before Nirmala Sitharaman

Prior to Nirmala Sitharaman, Jaswant Singh held the longest budget speech record. He presented the budget for 2 hours and 15 minutes in 2003.

The shortest budget speech was till then delivered by Hirubhai M Patel in 1977. It was an Interim Budget address of just 800 words.

Earlier today, Finance Minister presented her fourth budget focusing at the aim to maintain the 'world's fastest-growing economy' tag for India.

Post the announcement of the budget, the Indian economy is expected to expand 9.2 per cent in the fiscal year ending in March.