What is interim budget?

NEW DELHI: Before going towards the 2019 general elections, finance minister Arun Jaitley will present this year's budget -- an interim one -- on February 1. An interim budget is quite similar to a full-year budget as it also provides an outlook of a financial statement for a particular year.
This budget is crucial for the government as it offers one last opportunity to announce some popular measures ahead of the elections, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek a second term.
As per practice, an interim budget needs approval for essential government spending for a limited period in an election year and a full-fledged budget presented by the new government. While P Chidambaram had presented the previous UPA government's interim budget in February 2014, Jaitley had presented a full budget in July that year.
The normal practice is that if the budget date falls just a few months before the elections, then an interim budget is presented, leaving the full-year budget to the new government.
How interim budget is different form vote-on-account budget:
A vote-on-account only deals with the expenditure in the government's budget, while an “interim budget” includes both expenditure and receipts. The 2019 budget will be the sixth one to be presented by Jaitley in a row.
The finance ministry had began the budgetary exercise in October last year. During the process, meetings were held with the ministries of steel, power, housing and urban development and others to finalise revised expenditure for the current fiscal and projections for the next financial year.
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