Budget Documents Explained: What is Budget at a Glance?

As India awaits the last Union Budget before the general elections of 2024, it is important to understand the structure of the annual set of documents. Among the Budget documents, which contain the government's annual financial statement, is the Budget at a Glance.

While the Budget documents, as a whole, contain crucial details such as a comprehensive list of estimates of revenue and expenditure in the financial year ahead, the Budget at a Glance is a summary of the Budget aimed at explaining the broad aggregates set by the government for easy understanding.

What does Budget at a Glance contain?

• Receipts
• Expenditure 
• Fiscal deficit 
• revenue deficit
• Effective revenue deficit 
• primary deficit 

Unlike much of the Budget documents, the Budget at a Glance contains visual aids, such as charts and graphs, showing important aspects of the Union Budget such as the sources of receipts, details of debts, their applications, the flow of money, deficit indicators, and the composition of important budgetary variables.

Also unlike the rest of the Budget documents, the Budget at a Glance is both concise and rather reader-friendly. Simply put, it explains, in sufficient detail, the crux of all the broad aggregates, estimates and outlays of Budget in a form easy for readers to grasp and comprehend. 

It gives an overview of the government's finances while painting the overall picture of how it plans to spend money towards its overall goal of boosting economic growth and development. 

Besides, the Budget at a Glance document contains two important pie charts. These charts depict the estimated revenue and planned expenditure of the government in the form of every rupee earned and every rupee spent. 

ALSO READ: Union Budget: Where does money come from? Where does it go?