India begins to unwind stimulus tax cuts

Presenting the budget for the fiscal year ending March 2011 to Parliament, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Friday India's fiscal deficit, now 6.5 percent of GDP, would shrink to 5.5 percent of GDP, before falling to 4.1 percent of GDP by 2013.
As expected, he also hiked excize taxes by an average of 2 percentage points. The government had cut those taxes by 6 percentage points in the wake of the financial crisis to stimulate spending.