I take your point. It's more of a deadline for tabling the budget, and it's by February 1.
As for the fixed date, that may be a bit of a misnomer. The point was about anything that makes it hard for the government to table the budget when it sees fit. If anything is going on in the domestic economy or the global economy, there is going to be a cost along with that. There might not be an actual fixed date; this was more about flexibility and the best time to table the budget.