Parliament approves Finance Bill 2025, completes Budget FY26 exercise

New Delhi, Mar 27 (PTI) The Rajya Sabha on Thursday returned the Finance Bill 2025 to the Lok Sabha, along with 35 government amendments, including one that abolishes a 6 per cent digital tax on online advertisements, thus completing the 2025-26 budgetary exercise that started on February 1.

The House also returned the Appropriation Bill (3) with a voice vote.

Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had moved the two bills in the House.

The Lok Sabha had passed the Finance Bill on March 25 and passed the Appropriation Bill on March 21.

Replying to the debate later in the evening, she said the tendency of the finance ministry would be to exercise caution and not let go of revenues.

“But, here we wanted to use this opportunity to show our respect for Indian taxpayer. We have moved towards setting ₹12 lakh as threshold up to which no one will have to pay any tax,” Sitharaman said.

The Union Budget 2025-26 envisages a total expenditure of ₹50.65 lakh crore, an increase of 7.4 per cent over the current fiscal.

The total capital expenditure proposed for the next fiscal is ₹11.22 lakh crore and an effective capital expenditure of ₹15.48 lakh crore.

It proposes a gross tax revenue collection of ₹42.70 lakh crore and a gross borrowing of ₹14.01 lakh crore.

According to Budget documents, ₹5,41,850.21 crore has been earmarked for Centrally Sponsored Schemes for the financial year starting April 1, 2025. This compares with ₹4,15,356.25 crore for the current financial year.

For central sector schemes, ₹16.29 lakh crore have been earmarked for FY26 compared to ₹15.13 lakh crore for 2024-25.

Budget estimates of expenditure for 2025-26 have increased due to several reasons, including a rise in payment of interest on market loans, treasury bills, external loans, small savings and provident funds; higher requirements of Armed Forces, including capital expenditure; and more provisions for employment generation scheme.

Total resources being transferred to states, including devolution of states’ share, grants/loans and releases under Centrally Sponsored Schemes, in Budget 2025-26 are ₹25,01,284 crore, a rise of ₹4,91,668 crore over the actuals of 2023-24.

The fiscal deficit for FY26 is projected at 4.4 per cent against 4.8 per cent in the current fiscal.

The GDP for FY2025-26 is estimated at ₹3,56,97,923 crore, which is 10.1 per cent over the Revised Estimates for FY2024-25 of ₹3,24,11,406 crore released by the National Statistical Office(NSO).