New Delhi, Feb 1 (PTI) Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday called on President Ram Nath Kovind before presenting the Union Budget 2022-23.

As per established tradition, the Finance Minister met the President at the Rashtrapati Bhawan before heading to Parliament.

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"Smt Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance along with Ministers of State for Finance, Dr Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad, Shri Pankaj Chaudhary, and senior officials of the Ministry of Finance, called on President Ram Nath Kovind before presenting the Union Budget 2022-23," Rashtrapati Bhawan tweeted.

The Union Cabinet met thereafter to clear the Budget.

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Before the actual presentation, the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will approve the Budget for the fiscal year 2022-23 (April 2022 to March 2023).

While traditionally, copies of the Budget are brought to the Parliament complex before the finance minister arrives, this year no document has been printed following the COVID-19 protocol.

Instead, the Budget copies will be disseminated electronically, with documents being uploaded on the government website as well as being made available on a special app developed for the same.

Expectations are running high as Sitharaman presents her fourth budget in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. She has her task cut out to maintain the world's fastest-growing economy tag for India.

Dressed in a brown silk saree with a white border, Sitharaman continued with the tradition she set in 2019, carrying the budget speech in a bahi-khata, which she used for ditching the briefcase. This kept a digital tablet in a red bahi khata style pouch.

On the first day of the budget session of Parliament, Sitharaman on Monday tabled the pre-budget Economic Survey for 2021-22, which projected an 8-8.5 per cent growth for the economy in the coming financial year.

The economy is projected to expand by 9.2 per cent in the current fiscal year as against a contraction of 6.6 per cent in the previous fiscal ending March 31, 2021.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)