Kolkata: West Bengal Budget for the financial year 2025-26 will be presented in the Assembly on February 12, as per the decision taken at a meeting of the state cabinet at the state secretariat Nabanna on Monday which was presided over by the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The budget session of the state Assembly will start on February 10 this year. However, on the first day, the session will be adjourned after the mandatory obituary mentions. The budget will be presented by the West Bengal minister in charge of finance (independent charge) Chandrima Bhattacharya before the crucial state assembly elections in 2026.
Next year before the elections there will be only a vote-on-account budget and the full budget next year will be presented only after the polls are over and the results are announced.
On February 1, the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting the Union budget for the financial year 2025-26 on the floor of the Parliament.
Sources in the state Finance Department said that considering that this will be the last full- budget before the state assembly elections in 2026, there is a possibility of enhancement in allocation under different welfare and doll schemes offered by the state government, especially for those which are women and youth-specific.
At the same time, there is a possibility of an announcement of the increase in the dearness allowance for the state government, which had been a long contentious issue with a case in the matter being pending at the Supreme Court.
Bhattacharya will be presenting the state budget next month amid the recently released ‘Fiscal Health Index: 2025’, report from NITI Aayog, has revealed the poor show of West Bengal in revenue mobilisation, expenditure quality and debt index.
Of the 18 states reviewed, West Bengal ranked 16th in the report. As per the report, West Bengal’s spending on physical infrastructure as a proportion of the total expenditure has reduced from 5.3 per cent in 2018-19 to 3 per cent in 2022-23 which is lower than the national average.
Equality pathetic is the picture of capital expenditure as a proportion of total expenditure, which has reduced from 12.2 per cent in 2018-19 to 8.3 per cent in 2022-23 and is again lower than the national average.
Although the percentage under the head of social expenditure as a proportion of total expenditure had been comparatively higher in West Bengal at 28.2 per cent during the fiscal under review, the figure is again lower than the national average.
The report on ‘Fiscal Health Index: 2025’ has highlighted that while West Bengal’s tax revenue was the major source of income for the state government primarily due to collection under SGST and hence grew at an annual rate of 6.6 per cent over the past five years, the state’s non-tax revenue has witnessed a decline over the last five years.
At the same time, the report added, West Bengal’s reliance on grants-in-aid as a proportion of revenue receipts has increased from 17.6 per cent in 2018-19 to 19.6 per cent in 2022-23.
The same report has pointed out that although West Bengal’s debt as a percentage of gross state domestic product (GSDP) has declined from 40.7 per cent in 2010-11, the last financial year under the previous Left Front regime, to 35.7 per cent in 2018-19, the real cause of concern for the state government on this count is the interest payment on the accrued debt.
“Interest payments account for 20.47 per cent of Revenue Receipts in the current year, constraining the ability of the state to allocate funds for development,” the report read.
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ’s editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
