Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday began the presentation of Union Budget 2010-2011 with a renewed sense of optimism over the country’s growth and clear signals from policymakers to bring deficits back to manageable levels.

Expectations are high from the 74-year-old veteran politician, who has tabled four budgets in the past, to address the twin issue of bringing down prices while ensuring higher overall growth for the economy.

Highlighting India’s success in combating the economic crisis Pranab Mukherjee begins his budget speech in the Lok Sabha saying. “India has weathered economic crisis and the Indian economy is now in a better position that it was a year ago. However, challenges today are not any less than what it was 9 months back. Our task now is to quickly revert to a high GDP.”