The Finance Minister Arun Jaitely said that, achieving a 3% fiscal deficit target by 2017-18 is a challenge but the government will not compromise on building public infrastructure and irrigation.

“I am glad we have achieved the 4.1 per cent fiscal deficit target of last year. The journey to 3 per cent has various challenges,” he said.

The public investments has to go into infrastructure as the private sector was reluctant to put the funds in there.

“Besides the area of infrastructure, any additional resource that I  would have I tend to concentrate on irrigation,” Jaitley said.

“If fiscal discipline is established over the next 2-3 years, fiscal deficit will be better,” Jaitley said,and added that the fiscal deficit of states are better than that of the Centre.