New Delhi: The Union Budget 2026 will be presented on Sunday, Feb 1, 2026 by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The presentation will start at 11 am. The Union Budget is the annual financial statement of the Central government, which places all proposals of allocations to different sectors where the government spends such as infrastructure, healthcare, education, defence. It also has proposals of income from various tax (say income tax, customs) and non-tax related measures (say disinvestment). Budgets also signal the political intent of the government, which becomes evident in the various reforms measures that are introduced through the budgets almost every year.
Watch Budget Speech LIVE on News9Live
Watch Budget Coverage LIVE on TV9
Therefore, a budget is an extremely signifcant announcement which is also very detailed. It usually takes well over one houor of continuous presentation by the finance minister. By the way, this is going to be the ninth Budget that FM Sitharaman will be presenting. Only Morarji Desai, who presented the Union Budget 10 times, is ahead of her. If one listens to the Budget proposals, one gets a ringside view of where and how the government
Expectations this year
This year there are expectations of significant changes in customs duties. A lot of experts have said that they expect rejig of the customs duties similar to the lines of the GST reform that was done on Sept 3, 2025. The number of slabs could also be brought down and some procedures simplified.
Big bang announcements on income tax are not really expected this year afetr signifcant relief in the last year’s budget. However, there is expectation that the standard deviation could be raised from the Rs 75,000 this year.
Sectors in focus
Many analysts are also expecting significant benefits flowing into the renewable energy sector since it is one of the priorities of the government. The real estate sector, hospitalilty sector, defence sector are also supposed to get incentives. Capital expenditure is also expected to be in the focus of the government and allocations could continue to be healthy. There are also different sectors such as semi conductor processing and global capability centres which could get significant incentives to raise modern manufacturing and high-tech competitiveness of the country.