Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the government would make it a priority to reach 9% gross domestic product growth in the medium term and would seek to spend 9% of GDP on infrastructure development by 2014. Budget release was heavy on spending for farmers and the poor, a core constituency of the Congress party-led ruling coalition, funded by a surge in borrowing and an increase in the fiscal deficit to 6.8 percent of GDP.
In the run up to the budget 2009-10, Mint surveyed the India youth and asked what they want from the budget. Young and Restless India clearly want the existing policies to be implemented before introducing the new one.