India aims to use budget to woo rural voters

New Delhi

INDIA'S government will be trying to woo back rural voters and small businesses when it announces the 2018/19 budget on Thursday and pick up economic momentum as it heads into a season of elections, officials said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, extolling India as a model of economic growth and political openness, told the World Economic Forum in Davos last week the country would be a US$5 trillion economy by 2025, more than double its current size.

But at home, Mr Modi is facing voter discontent over falling farm incomes and the lack of jobs for hundreds of thousands of youth entering the labour force each month.

This month, the government lowered its gross domestic growth forecast for the year ending March, 2018, to 6.5 per cent, the weakest pace in four years. Growth slowed down because of a chaotic rollout of a nationwide goods and service tax (GST) …