A populist budget?
Raj Anikat / Driknews
The think tanks have expressed their mixed reaction over the current fiscal year's budget presented by the finance adviser. Many columnists from top national dailies define it as a business friendly budget, while some others explain it as populist. However, we have heard comments from the eminent economists that the current budget is nothing but a short-term economic protection scheme. Finally, the finance adviser, the budget maker himself, said that even though it seems to be full of short-term protective measures, it contains many long-term directions as well. The budget contains many remedies protecting the economy from uncertainty but for the long term it seems to contain nothing. Nor has it any direction on the possible solution of the double-digit inflation, food and energy price hikes etc. A silver lining in the budget, as we see, is its social security net programme. But the programme's real execution is a questionable issue because it may be difficult to reach the actual needy people, the hard core poor. Needless to say, we cannot forget that the quality of execution is more important than the quality of planning. So, the government should ensure proper implementation of the budget.
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