Budget 2022: IMF’s Gita Gopinath expects Nirmala Sitharaman to address unequal recovery, focus on health

Gopinath said that she also expects the government to focus more on healthcare spending and increase education expenditure.

New Delhi: The Indian government is in the last leg of the Budget 2022 preparations. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is all set to present the Budget 2022 on February 1, 2022. A few days ahead of the Union Budget presentation, Gita Gopinath, deputy managing director of IMF, has urged Sitharaman to address the unequal recovery with Budget 2022-23 by adequately funding the rural employment guarantee scheme and ensuring free food ration beyond March. 

Gopinath, on Wednesday, in an interview with BloombergQuint, said that she also expects the government to focus more on healthcare spending and increase education expenditure. 

Gopinath is also hoping India to continue the infrastructure investment along with the asset monetisation programme. She added that India should communicate a credible medium-term target for the fiscal deficit that will help in keeping the financing costs down at this time when the interest rates are set to increase in advanced economies like the US. 

Meanwhile, the IMF on Tuesday, January 25, cut India's economic growth forecast by 0.5 percentage points to 9 per cent for the current fiscal year. Chief Economist Gopinath said that the slight downgrade is mainly due to the impact of the spread of the Omicron variant. Also Read: Google's foldable smartphone might be called Pixel Notepad: Report

"If you look at the 2021-22 fiscal year, we have a slight downgrade of -0.5 percentage points and for the next fiscal year 2022-23 we have a slight upgrade of 0.5 percentage points. So, growth for the previous fiscal year is now nine per cent and for this year now is at nine per cent. We moved it up slightly," Gopinath told reporters during a news conference. Also Read: Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event on February 9: Timings, what to expect and all you need to know