Budget trivia: Did you know?

New Delhi: Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will present the Budget 2012 in Parliament on Wednesday. Here are a few facts about the Union Budget:

- Who has presented the maximum number of budgets and how many times?

Morarji Desai, 10 budgets

- Who are the Prime Ministers to have presented a Budget?

Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi

- Who has been the only woman finance minister of India so far?

Indira Gandhi

- Who gave the shortest ever interim budget speech?

HM Patel in 1977. His speech was 800 words long.

- Who introduced the concept of service tax?

Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister

- Who held the Finance Minister's portfolio for the shortest period of time?

Jaswant Singh was the finance minister only for 13 days.

- Who has been the only Finance Minister to have risen to be the President of India?

R Venkataraman

- Who was the Chief Economic Advisor for the maximum number of budgets?

Shankar Acharya - seven Union Budgets and two Interim Budgets.

Landmark Indian budgets: Budgets which influenced the Indian economic history

February 28, 1970: Indira Gandhi presented the Budget against the backdrop of bank nationalisation that began in the previous year.

February 28, 1982: Pranab Mukherjee presented the Budget after India signed an agreement with IMF for a $ 5 billion loan.

March 16, 1985: VP Singh presented the Budget on the heels of an improvement in the economy. India had voluntarily terminated its agreement with IMF in May, 1984.

July 24, 1991: Manmohan Singh presented the Budget in the wake of a balance of payments crisis and double digit inflation.

February 28, 1997: P Chidambaram presented the Budget after an average growth of 7 per cent for three years. It was called the 'Dream Budget' and many widely accepted it as the best budget.

February 27, 1999: Yashwant Sinha presented the Budget amid the fallout of the Asian financial crisis and economic sanctions on India for conducting nuclear tests.

February 28, 2005: P Chidambaram presented the Budget soon after the economy began its highest ever growth phase.