The Union Budget for the financial year 2025-26 will be released as GDP growth cools down to 6.4 per cent in FY24-25, down from 8.2 per cent recorded in FY23-24.
Here are the key faces in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget 2025 team.
Finance Secretary Short Song Pandaate
Tuhin Kanta Pandey is presently serving as finance and revenue secretary. Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government appointed him as the revenue department’s secretary months ahead of the Union Budget 2025. Pandey will act as the main communication thread between all departments of the Ministry of Finance, including the Department of Revenue, the Department of Economic Affairs, and the Department of Expenditure.
He is also handling the task of revising income -tax law, which might be introduced in the upcoming season, reported the Economic Times.
CEA V Anantha Nageswaran
Economic Survey is presented a day prior to the presentation of Union Budget 2025, ie on January 31. The document provides a comprehensive overview of the situation of India’s economic sectors including agriculture, industry, services, etc. CEA V Ananta Nageswaran is responsible for overseeing the preparation of Economic Survey 2024-25.
Expendital Secretary Manoj Govil
Manoj Govil is the secretary of the Department of Expenditure in Nirmala Sitharaman’s Ministry of Finance. He is an IIT graduate who pursued a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and a PhD in Economics from Princeton University. According to ET, he is handling key tasks under the Budget 2025 preparation, like rationalising subsidies and boosting expenditures in government-run schemes.
M Nagaraju Secretary, Department of Financial Services
M Nagaraju has chaired multiple meetings with public sector lender chiefs to review various financial inclusion schemes operational in India. According to an ET report, his key areas of focus in Union Budget 2025 will include credit flow, deposit mobilisation, fintech regulation, insurance coverage expansion, etc.
Ajay Seth, Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs
Ajay Seth, Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs, is a Karnataka cadre bureaucrat from the 1987 batch. His career spans over 33 years, and he has extensively worked in public finance and taxation for 18 years.
