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Union Budget every year is presented by the Finance
Minister on the first working day of February.
Halwa ceremony: Before the budget is printed more than 100
officials of Finance Ministry remain in the printing press where Halwa is
prepared in a kadai and is served. These officials remain in the budget
printing press till the Finance Minister finishes his budget speech.
Budget is a document that gives us the information
about expenditure of the Government for the following year and also the revenue
side where it discusses about direct and indirect tax rate changes or
introductions.
For making the long document easy and lucid we
divided the information into sector wise and discussed each sector
individually.
1.
India’s
GDP among the world countries:
·
Government
says that it is firmly on course to achieve high growth of 8% plus as
manufacturing, services and exports are back on good growth path and IMF, in
its latest Update, has forecast that India will grow at 7.4% next year.
·
Services
resumed high growth rates of 8% plus, exports expected to grow at 15% in
2017-18 and manufacturing back on good growth path.
·
India
is the seventh largest in the world with USD 2.5 trillion-dollar GDP and is
about to become the fifth largest economy soon.
·
At
the international level, the country is ranked 100 in World Bank’s ‘Ease of
Doing Business’ breaking into top 100 for the first time.
·
India
is already the third largest economy by Purchasing Power Parity basis.
Government has taken up programmes to direct the
benefits of structural changes and good growth to reach farmers, poor and other
vulnerable sections of our society and to uplift the under-developed regions.
Budget will consolidate these gains and
particularly focus on strengthening agriculture and rural economy, provision of
good health care to economically less privileged, taking care of senior
citizens, infrastructure creation and working with the States to provide more
resources for improving the quality of education in the country.
2. Agriculture
and rural economy
· For
Doubling Farmer income to 2022 Government has announced a few Schemes.
· Government
has decided to keep MSP for all unannounced kharif crops atleast one and half
times of their production cost.
· volume
of institutional credit for agriculture sector from year-to-year increased from
Rs.8.5 lakh crore in 2014-15 to Rs.10 lakh crore in 2017-18 and he proposed to
raise this to11 lakh crore for the year 2018-19.
· Fisheries
and Aqua culture Infrastructure Development Fund (FAIDF) for fisheries sector and an Animal
Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund (AHIDF) for financing
infrastructure requirement of animal husbandry sector with a total corpus of 10,000
crores for the two new funds.
· A
new Scheme ‘‘Operation Greens’’ was announced with an outlay of
Rs 500 Crore to address the challenge of price volatility of
perishable commodities like tomato, onion and potato.
· Develop
and upgrade existing 22,000 rural haats into Gramin Agricultural
Markets (GrAMs) to take care of the interests of more than 86% small and
marginal farmers.
· Rs
200 crore has been allocated for organized
cultivation of highly specialized medicinal and aromatic plants.
Further organic farming by Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) and Village
Producers’ Organizations (VPOs) in large clusters, preferably of 1000 hectares
each will be encouraged.
· Allocation
of Ministry of Food Processing has been doubled from Rs.715
crore in 2017-18 to 1400 crore in 2018-19.
· Re-structured
National Bamboo Mission with
an outlay of1290 crore to promote bamboo sector in a holistic
manner terming Bamboo as Green Gold.
· Proposed
to set up state-of-the-art testing facilities in all the 42 Mega Food Parks.
· To
increase export potential to $100 billion for the present $ 30 billion.
· 2600
crore allocated for Prime Minister Krishi
Sinchai Yojana Har Khet koPani (Ground water irrigation scheme).
· Loans
to SHGs will increase to 75,000 crores by
March, 2019 and increased allocation of National Rural Livelihood
Mission to Rs 5750 crore in 2018-19.
· Ujjwala
Scheme distribution of free LPG
connections will be given to 8 crore poor women increase from
5 crores.
· Saubahagya
Yojana, 4 crore poor households
are being provided with electricity connection with an outlay of 16,000
crores.
· For
creation of livelihood and infrastructure in rural areas, total
amount to be spent by the Ministries will be Rs.14.34 lakh crore.
3. Education,
Health and Social Protection:
Estimated budgetary expenditure on health,
education and social protection for 2018-19 is Rs.1.38 lakh crore against
estimated expenditure of Rs.1.22 lakh crore in 2017-18.
Education:
· Ekalavya
Model Residential School on
par with NavodayaVidyalayas to provide the best quality education to the tribal
children in their own environment by 2022 in every block with more
than 50% ST population and at least 20,000 tribal persons with special
facilities for preserving local art and culture besides
providing training in sports and skill development.
· Revitalizing
Infrastructure and Systems in Education (RISE) to step up investments in research and
related infrastructure in premier educational institutions, including health
institutions.
· Prime
Minister’s Research Fellows (PMRF) Scheme: Under this, 1,000 best B.Tech students will
be identified each year from premier institutions and provide them facilities
to do D. in IITs and IISc,with a handsome fellowship.
Health:
· National
Health Protection Scheme: To
cover over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families around 50 crore members
providing coverage up to 5 lakh rupees per family per year for secondary and
tertiary care hospitalization.
· Rs
1200 crore for the National Health
Policy, 2017.
· 600
crore to provide nutritional support to
all TB patients at the rate of Rs.500 per month.
· A
total of 187 projects have been sanctioned under the NamamiGange programme for
infrastructure development, river surface cleaning, rural sanitation and other
interventions at a cost of 16,713 crore. All 4465
Ganga Grams – villages on the bank of river – have been declared open
defecation free
Social Sector:
· Allocation
on National Social Assistance Programme this year has been
kept at 9975 crore.
4.Medium,
Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs) and Employment:
· Rs
3794 crore to MSME Sector for giving credit support, capital and interest
subsidy and innovations.
· Target
to lend Rs 3 lakh crores under MUDRA Yojana in 2018-19. NBFCs
· Corporate
tax rate reduced to 25% for companies which reported a
turnover up to 250 crores in the FY 2016-17.
· National
Apprenticeship Scheme with
stipend support to give training to 50 lakh youth by 2020
· Setting
up of model aspirational skill centres in every district of the country
under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra.
· Rs
7148 crore for the textile sector in 2018-19 to boost employment.
5. Infrastructure
and Financial Sector Development:
· Announced
increase of budgetary allocation on infrastructure for 2018-19 to Rs.5.97 lakh
crore against estimated expenditure of Rs.4.94 lakh crore in 2017-18.
· Our
country needs massive investments estimated to be in excess ofRs 50 lakh crore
in infrastructure to increase growth of GDP.
· Using
online monitoring system of PRAGATI alone, projects worth 9.46 lakh crore have
been facilitated and fast tracked.
· Under
the BharatmalaPariyojana, about 35000 kms road construction in Phase-I at
an estimated cost of Rs.5,35,000 crore has been approved.
Railways:
· Railways
Capital Expenditure for the year 2018-19 has been pegged at Rs.1,48,528 crore
· 4000
kilometers of electrified railway network is slated for commissioning during
2017-18.
· 12,000
wagons, 5160 coaches and approx. 700 locomotives to be produced during 2018- 19
· Addition
of 90 kms of double line tracks at a cost of over Rs 11,000 crore in Mumbai’s
transport system. 4. 150kms of additional suburban network planned at a cost of
Rs 40,000 crore.
AIRWAYS
· Regional
connectivity scheme of UDAN (UdeDesh ka AamNagrik) – to
connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads across the country.
· Airport
Authority of India (AAI) has 124 airports. Government proposes to expand
airport capacity more than five times under a new initiative – NABH Nirman.
Defence:
· To
secure India’s defences, government plans to develop infrastructure and
connectivity in border areas.
· Rohtang
tunnel has been completed to provide all
weather connectivity to the Ladakh region.
· Government
proposes to take up Construction of Zozila Pass tunnel and tunnel under
construction of Sela Pass.
6. Disinvestment:
· 2017-18
disinvestment target of Rs. 72,500 crores has been exceeded and expected
receipts of Rs. 1,00,000 crores. Disinvestment target of Rs. 80,000 crores for
2018-19.
· Three
Public Sector Insurance companies- National Insurance Co. Ltd., United India
Assurance Co. Ltd., and Oriental India insurance Co. Ltd., will be merged into
a single insurance entity.
· A
comprehensive Gold Policy will be formulated to develop gold as an asset class. Gold
Monetization Scheme will be revamped to enable people to open a
hassle-free Gold Deposit Account.
· Emoluments
to Rs.5 lakh for the President, Rs 4 lakhs for the Vice President and Rs.3.5
lakh per month to Governor are proposed.
7. Fiscal
Management:
This is a very important section and please pay
attention to all bold words in this section.
· The
Budget Revised Estimates for expenditure in 2017-18 are Rs.57
lakh crore as against the Budget Estimates of Rs.21.47 lakh
crore.
· Projected
a Fiscal Deficit of 3.3% of GDP for the year 2018-19. The Revised Fiscal
Deficit estimates for 2017-18 were put at Rs. 5.95 lakh crore at 3.5% of GDP.
· Acceptance of key recommendations of the Fiscal Reform
and Budget Management Committee to bring down Central Government’s Debt
to GDP ratio to 40%.
· The
growth of direct taxes in financial year 2016-17 was 12.6 percent,
and for financial year 2017-18 (up to 15th January, 2018) is 18.7
percent
· The
number of Effective Tax Payers has increased from47 crore at
the beginning of Financial year 2014-15 to 8.27 crore at the
end of 2016-17.
·
100
percent deduction to companies registered as Farmer Producer
Companies with an annual turnover up to Rs. 100 crores on profit
derived from such activities, for a period of five years from
financial year 2018-19.
· Proposed
to tax such Long-Term Capital Gains exceeding Rs. 1 lakh at the rate of
10 percent, without allowing any indexation benefit. However, all gains up
to 31stJanuary, 2018 will be grandfathered. The Finance Minister has also
proposed to introduce a tax on distributed income by equity oriented
mutual funds at the rate of 10 percent
8. Relief
to senior Citizens:
· Exemption
of interest income on deposits with banks and post offices are proposed to be
increased from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000.
· Hike
in deduction limit for health insurance premium and/ or medical expenditure
from Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 50,000 under section 80D.
· Increase
in deduction limit for medical expenditure for certain critical illness from Rs
.60,000 (in case of senior citizens) and from Rs. 80,000 (in case of very
senior citizens) to Rs. 1 lakh for all senior citizens, under section 80DDB
· Extend
the Pradhan Mantri Vaya Vandana Yojana up to March, 2020. The current
investment limit is also proposed to be increased to Rs. 15 lakhs from the
existing limit of Rs. 7.5 lakh per senior citizen.
With the roll of GST, the Budget also proposes to
change the name of the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) to the
Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC).
