The Budget will lower to a large extent the liquidity stress in the financial sector

Presenting the Budget for 2019-20, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made no changes to the income tax slabs but hiked surcharge on the super-rich; she announced further opening up of aviation, insurance and media sectors to foreign investment

While imported defence equipment has been exempted from customs duty, petrol, diesel, gold and other precious metals have become costlier in the Union Budget 2019.

It would be folly to gloss over two-thirds of the reason why Indian economy is in a deep slowdown-declining consumption

Modernisation plans have been on hold for years because governments have not been able to set aside large sums and most of the defence expenditure goes on salaries and pensions for a 1.4 million standing military, the world's second largest after China.

Union Budget 2019: India's total imports have zoomed up 75 per cent in the past decade, hitting a 15-year peak of $637 billion in the last fiscal. But while the services component has more than doubled in this period, goods imports have gone up by around 70 cent

Budget 2019: Indian economy will reach $3 trillion in current year, it is well within our capacity to reach $5 trillion economy in few years, says FM

Union Budget 2019 Live: With today's budget, the Modi government seeks to reverse weakening growth and investment to regain India's fastest growing economy tag

Along with Sitharaman, the list includes one of Britain's senior most Cabinet ministers, Penny Mordaunt, along with other prominent names such as Priti Patel and Baroness Sandy Verma, filmmaker Gurinder Chadha, Indian law firm chiefs Zia Mody and Pallavi S Shroff, Apollo Hospitals' managing director Suneeta Reddy and Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh.

While the NDA's return assures political stability, concerns related to auto, infrastructure, banking, NBFC sectors, apart from reduced consumption, loom large. Here is how you can handle the uncertainty in stock markets

As the Narendra Modi government gets ready to present its first full Budget of the current term on July 5, Gopal Krishna Agarwal, the BJP's National Spokesperson on Economic Affairs, says the focus will be on more efficient revenue realisation rather than increasing the tax burden. Agarwal, a qualified chartered accountant, tells Business Today's Joe C. Mathew that Budget 2019/20 is likely to prioritise infrastructure spending to strengthen agriculture, rural economy and job creation. Edited excerpts:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chairing an all-party meeting on the eve of the first session, invited heads of all parties to a meeting on June 19 who have an MP either in the Lower House or the Rajya Sabha to discuss the \"one nation, one election\" issue.

Despite touching a maximum of 5.8 per cent growth in FY18, Pakistan's GDP for FY19 plummeted to 3.3 per cent, well below a target of6.2% set last year

Instead of splurging tens of thousands of crores of rupees on an unproven foreign fighter, India would be better off investing that amount in its indigenous stealth fighter programme - the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft.