Ajay Lakhotia Answers Young India's Questions on Budget 2024

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StockGro, discussed the budget and its impact on common man with Ishaan Agarwal, Sandeep Yadav of NIT Allahabad and Devika Deevasan of IIT Madras. Read on to know how he decoded the budget for Young India. Q. Everyone thinks that the budget is all about taxes. How does it affect the common man?Ajay Lakhotia: Unlike the myth that the common man doesn’t get affected by budget, it actually really does affect a common man.

Let’s look at this with some examples. Assume, your grocery bill is Rs. 50,000 every month, and most of it is the staples that you buy.

Out of this Rs. 50,000, if the 5% GST component becomes 10%, you would have to pay additional Rs. 30,000 in taxes annually.

This is how the budget would start affecting the common man. The budget is also how the government decides fund allocation to different sectors of the economy like defence, healthcare, agriculture. So if a budget allocates more money to agri-infra across the next couple of years, we can understand that the throughput of the agriculture sector will increase.

This makes it a good time to invest in the agriculture sector.Q. Why did we have two budgets this year?Ajay Lakhotia: This year was unique because it was an election year. When the government presents a budget, it is for the whole year. But in election years, if the same government is not re-elected, all the initiatives would have to be re-evaluated.

The new government will change the budget and reallocate funds to different sectors. For this reason, a provisional budget was created which was valid till the election happens. Now that the election is done and the NDA is back in power, the government will set up a full year’s budget from here onwards.Q. The budget always manages to shake up the stock