The government is working with guidelines to prevent the current West Asian conflict from becoming a burden on its citizens, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman said on Friday.
Responding to the debate on the Finance Bill 2026 in the Rajya Sabha, Sitharaman said that the government has reduced excise duty on petrol from ₹13 per liter ₹3 per liter and completely removed ₹10 per liter excise duty on diesel with the sole objective of preventing the sudden global rise in oil prices due to the conflict from becoming a burden on its citizens.
Meanwhile, Parliament on Friday passed the Finance Bill 2026, with the Rajya Sabha returning it to the Lok Sabha by voice vote, completing the budget exercise. The Lok Sabha passed the bill on 25 March along with 32 amendments. The Rajya Sabha returned the bill after a brief discussion.
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“(S)In the last four years, after the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, there has been a lot of stress regarding oil, fertilizers, and therefore we are managing the situation carefully, and the prime minister’s only guideline is: hamare nagrik ke upar bojh na pade (the citizens should not be burdened). We are handling the situation carefully,” said the minister, and this morning the minister himself announced a reduction in excise duty on gasoline with immediate effect.
The finance minister said that India has not increased the retail price of petrol and diesel and on the contrary, the government is shouldering the burden of ensuring that oil marketing companies buy more petroleum products and keep supplies uninterrupted.
Sitharaman said the government has also introduced an export tax on refined products to ensure that these products are first available in the domestic market under the current circumstances.
Rising oil prices
Global oil prices have risen from $70 per barrel to over $122 per barrel in just over a month due to the ongoing conflict in West Asia, the finance minister said, adding that this has led to petrol and diesel prices rising by 30-50% in Southeast Asian countries, 30% in North America, 20% in Europe and 50% in African countries, while prices in India remained flat.
Responding to a question on how the government will meet the fiscal deficit of 4.3% in 2026-2027 in view of the announced cut in excise duty on petrol and basil, the finance minister said that excise tax is one of the many sources of government revenue and contributes less than 10% of the gross tax revenue estimated to be collected in the coming financial year, but the government will have to settle in the current fiscal year. “Mobilizing additional resources, prioritizing growth-driven spending, better targeting of social security spending as well as greater transparency in fiscal operations have been significant hallmarks of the government and I think we will follow the same pattern. We will be able to keep the government’s fiscal stance carefully managed.”
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Earlier, the Finance Minister said that the Finance Bill 2026 was drafted with reforms in mind, which the reform express that the Prime Minister keeps referring to has maintained its momentum.
“The pace of reforms has not slowed down at all. The Finance Bill also contains elements of these reforms which are being pushed because we want India to be a much more vibrant country economically. The reform express is what led us to include many elements in the Finance Bill to reflect the mood of the nation,” the finance minister said.
The goal is inclusiveness
“The guiding principle has been inclusiveness and we have ensured that every section can benefit from the opening of the economy. The approach has also been that we have looked at every law that is there, every regulation or notification, with the intention of ensuring that we decriminalize and that the regulation is a soft touch regulation,” she added.
Deregulation was manifested by changes in customs law that made it easier for travelers to travel overseas. In one year in 2025, there has also been a major reshaping of tax administration, with the revenue department not only amending the Income Tax Act, but also looking at customs, looking at GST reforms, Sitharaman said.
Overall, she said, the government’s approach was to make it easier for people to do business.
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The finance minister also suggested that the new GDP series with 2023–24 as the base year was not done with the intention of any downward revision of the previous government’s GDP numbers and the expected this year was a general practice and done by all the previous governments since independence where new series are adopted after more than 10 years.
Regarding taxes and surcharges, the finance minister said they were levied with a purpose and states were the biggest beneficiary of the levy collected by the Centre. “We collect cesses and surcharges and also spend them. In fact, between 2014-15 and 2026-27, cess collections (excluding oil and GST offsets) are estimated to ₹24.34 trillion while expenditure was ₹24.28 trillion,” the finance minister said.
