Rajiv Kumar to Krishnamurthy Subramanian: The team behind FM's Budget 2020

A 1984 batch officer from the Jharkhand cadre, Kumar is known as the driving force behind the spate of mergers of state-owned banks.

Budget 2020 : Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her second Budget a little more than a month from now. With growth at its lowest in more than six years and a long-lasting slowdown affecting demand and consumption across sectors, Sitharaman and her team are looking to announce measures to boost growth and activity.

Also, after a number of rollbacks following the last Budget, the political leadership is looking to seize back initiative as the government is being criticised by stakeholders for not being able to manage the slowdown, with multiple agencies, including the RBI, slashing growth forecasts for the year.

Like any other FM, Sitharaman will depend on her team of bureaucrats and advisors to frame and present the budget. Arup Roychoudhury compiles brief profiles:

Rajiv Kumar

(Finance and financial services secretary)

According to the norm, being the senior-most of the five secretaries in the Finance Ministry, Financial

Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar also holds the designation of finance secretary. A 1984 batch officer from the Jharkhand cadre, Kumar is known as the driving force behind the spate of mergers of state-owned banks. The ambitious Rs 2.1-trillion bank recapitalisation programme was also announced during his time. The biggest challenge that Kumar has had to deal with during his stint is the level of toxic assets in the banking system and the liquidity crisis in non-banking financial companies (NBFCs). The upcoming Union Budget 2020-21 will be his last, as he is expected to retire from the service at the end of February. Even if the financial services secretary gets an extension, it is likely to be for a few more months, till the Finance Bill is passed.

Ajay Bhushan Pandey

(Revenue secretary)

Replacing Hasmukh Adhia was never meant to be easy. And it hasn’t been for Pandey, who is also the chairman of the Goods and Service Tax Network and, till recently, was heading the Unique Identification Authority of India as well. Pandey has come in for heavy criticism for giving unrealistic tax revenue targets for the year. With growth faltering, all the direct and indirect tax projections are now coming undone, and the Centre is unlikely to meet the fiscal deficit target of 3.3 per cent of gross domestic product for 2019-20. It remains to be seen what sort of a positive impact the recent corporate tax cuts have on investment levels by the private sector.