Education Budget 2023 Live Updates: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting the Budget 2023 today in Parliament. It is expected that the Budget 2023 will focus on boosting the country’s economy which has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The government is likely to announce measures to spur growth, create jobs, increase investment in infrastructure and the healthcare sector, and support the agriculture and rural sector. Additionally, the government may also announce reforms in the Education sector.
Earlier, UGC Chairman Prof M Jagadesh Kumar told ABP Live that the government is set to introduce several reforms and these require huge investments. Pointing out that there was a 6 to 7 percent increase in the allocation last year, compared to the previous year, Prof Kumar said: “I would expect a similar trend to happen this year also and much of these funds will be used for infrastructural development, for creating a better digital backbone for our higher education.”
To meet the demands of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, it’s recommended by industry specialists that the allocation of GDP for education should be 6% or more. Despite the NEP’s recommendation of 6% of GDP for education, the sector has only received 3.1% of GDP as of 2022-23. The education budget allocation for the two departments of the education ministry -school and higher education – was Rs 1,04,277.72 crore, an 11.85% increase. Out of this, Rs 63,449.37 crore was given to the department of School Education and Literacy and Rs 40,810.34 crore was given to the Department of Higher Education.
On Tuesday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tabled the Economic Survey (2022-23) in Parliament. The Economic Survey 2022-23 has forecast India’s GDP growth for the next fiscal 2023-24 in a broad range of 6-6.8 percent. Its baseline forecast for real GDP growth is 6.5 percent.
According to the Economic Survey 2022-23, the Indian economy is “staging a broad-based recovery across sectors”, positioning itself to “ascend to the pre-pandemic growth path in FY23.”