Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Dr P Thiaga Rajan is all set to table the state budget for the financial year 2022-2023. In what would become his first full-time budget as the Finance Minister, Thiaga Rajan has on Wednesday said that the budget would be tabled at 10 am on March 18 in the legislative assembly session. 

Being the first full-time budget of the DMK government that came to power last May, it has drawn major expectations over rolling out some of the party's crucial poll promises including providing Rs 1000 for every homemaker per month. With the landslide victory in the recently-held urban local body polls, the MK Stalin administration has been surfaced with more scrutiny on delivering the promises.

The Finance Minister has announced that it will be an e-budget for the second consecutive year. Speaking to IANS, economist Kalimuthu Palaniswamy said, "People of Tamil Nadu are eagerly waiting for the welfare schemes to be announced in the second budget of Palanivel Thiaga Rajan." The Finance Minister has earlier said that the financial problems of the state can be corrected with once in generation reforms and business as usual approach cannot continue. 

It has been reported that the Business Advisory Committee will also decide on the date of presentation of the Agriculture budget and the number of days to debate on the demands for grants for departments. The Finance Minister will present a vote-on-account on March 24 for the first few months of the financial year 2022-23 and the final supplementary estimates for 2021-22. The state is eagerly expecting a welfare-oriented budget with a special focus on the health sector. 

In an official release, Assembly Secretary K Srinivasan said that the House would convene at the Assembly Hall in the state secretariat at 10 am on March 18. He further said that Assembly Speaker M Appavu has made the announcement and the Business Advisory Committee will decide the number of days the House will be in session. The reports say that the session would be conducted for four to five days. 

Last year, the DMK government had reduced the petrol price by Rs 3 per litre, which has resulted in a revenue loss of Rs 1,160 crore per annum. As the sequel of the plummeting revenue, we can expect that the government wouldn't reduce tax on petrol and diesel. The Finance Minister has ruled out any reduction in the tax rates on petrol/diesel as it would reduce the state's revenue by about Rs 1,050 crore.