challenging issue were also promised rating agencies would be happy the fm resisted the pressure to loosen his pursestrings and the temptation to use the leeway given to him by a panel on fiscal reforms and restrained himself to a fiscal deficit target of 32 of gdp even better he cut the revenue deficit which measures the extent to which routine government spending exceeds its income to 19 of gdp lower than the 2 mandated by the law on fiscal responsibility he has been helped in this by the fact that direct tax collections rose by over 17 for the second successive year and collections of advance personal income tax for the current year are up an impressive 348 that gives the fm reason to believe that tax revenues will be buoyant interestingly while the election commission had asked the government to refrain from making proposals specific to the five pollbound states the fm virtually avoided any mention of specific states the only exceptions were two new aiims hospitals for jharkhand and gujarat and tax sops on land acquired for building andhra pradeshs new capital he indicated that the railways clubbed for the first time in almost a century in the general budget would work out its fares and freight charges on a sounder economic basis while the fm promised a safety fund with a corpus of over rs 1 lakh crore in five years the concerns about its financial health remained unaddressed perhaps because the likely treatment could prove a bitter pill in election seasonwatch watch highlights of union budget 2017