Budget 2023: Finance Ministry to kick start pre-budget meets with stakeholders from November 21

Union Budget 2023: The Ministry of Finance has confirmed that the round of pre-budget meetings with various stakeholders and other ministers from states will begin on November 21. Scheduled dates have been assigned to various stakeholders and ministries for meeting with the Finance Ministry. The first meeting will be with the stakeholders of the infra sector and climate change group that will be held on November 21.

Recently, the ministry completed the first set of pre-budget meetings with several Central ministries and departments. More pre-budget meetings will be held in the upcoming weeks where various stakeholders would be consulted. The suggestions given by these stakeholders are likely to be considered while drafting the budget proposals.

The ministry has scheduled a meeting with stakeholders related to agriculture and agro-processing on November 22 and another meeting with the people associated with the financial sector and capital market on November 22 itself.

The meeting with service and trade people and with the trade union, labor, and economist groups has been scheduled on November 24 and November 28 respectively.

The Budget for the 2023-24 fiscal would be presented in Parliament on February 1, 2023.  Amongst different expectations from the Budget for 2023-24 fiscal the Finance Ministry is likely to change its capital gains tax structure in the Budget 2023-24 to bring parity in various asset classes, like equity, debt, and immovable property, to tax them uniformly, reported Reuters. The news agency quoted an official saying that asset classes currently are not taxed uniformly and have different holding periods for levying capital gains tax, which needs to be aligned.

The ministry will hold a meeting with finance ministers of different states on November 25. 

Reuters further quoted the official as saying that the government has received several proposals from the industry to simplify the capital gains tax structure, and changes are expected in the Budget for 2023/24.