Covid impact: weak revenue flow, high expenditure on essential relief Union Budget: Fiscal deficit pegged at 9.5% of GDP in re 2020-21, Amendment to the FRBM Act; target to reach fiscal deficit level below 4.5% by 2025-26 GN Bureau | February 1, 2021 In the budget speech on Monday, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman drew the attention of the Parliament on the fact that the pandemic’s impact on the economy has resulted in a weak revenue inflow. This was combined with high expenditure to provide essential relief to vulnerable sections of the society especially the poor, women, SCs and STs. Revised Estimates (RE) 2020-21 “We opted for a series of medium-sized packages during the pandemic so that we could calibrate and target our response according to an evolving situation. Once the health situation stabilised, and the lockdown was being slowly lifted, we switched to ramping up Government spending so as to revive domestic demand,” Sitharaman said. As a result, against an original Budgetary Estimates (BE) 2020-2021 for expenditure of Rs 30.42 lakh crore, the Revised Estimates (RE) 2020-21 are Rs 34.50 lakh crore. The Government has maintained the quality of expenditure. The capital expenditure, estimated in RE 2020-21 is Rs 4.39 lakh crore in 2020-2021 as against Rs 4.12 lakh crore in BE 2020-21.