Key Points: Union Budget 2018
Posted [relativedate] at [relativetime time_format=”H:i”]
Finally, the Union Budget 2018-2019 has been introduced by the Finance minister Arun Jaitley today in the morning. The budget has been formulated by the mission to strengthen the sectors of Infrastructure, employment, Agriculture, Rural development, health, and education. Let us have a look at some of the key points of the budget today.
> The Finance Minister announced that the government will allocate 14.3 trillion rupees for the welfare of rural employment. It also includes the creating 3,71,000 km roads and 5.8 million rural homes.
> When it comes to the agriculture sector, 86% of the Indian farmers are poor and marginal. The government has taken the initiative to develop and upgrade the existing 22000 rural haats to Gramin Agricultural Markets. These markets are directly linked to e-Nam and the farmers have the facility to make a direct sale to consumers and bulk purchasers.
> 2000 Crore rupees has been allocated for developing and upgrading Agriculture Marketing Infrastructure in 22000 GrAMs and 585 APMs.
> Organic farming FPO’s and VPO’s along with women self-help groups will be encouraged to take up organic agriculture in clusters under National Rural Livelihood Programme.
> “Operation Greens” has been introduced to address the fluctuation in prices of Tomato, Onion, Potato which will be produced throughout the year for the benefit of farmers and consumers. A sum of 500 Crores has been allocated to this. The institutional credit for Agriculture sector this year is 11 lakh Crore rupees which are relatively high when compared to the previous budgets.
> The Income Tax and slab rates have been kept unchanged. However, it gave relief to tax paying individuals by giving an allowance of 40000 rupees under the label of transport and medical. It also made changes in IT deduction limit on health insurance premium, medical expenditures and on fixed deposits incurred by senior citizens.
> 4% Health and education cess was proposed by the Finance Minister in-order to take care of health and educational needs of poor and rural families.
> Emoluments will be revised for the president to 5 lakh rupees, 4 lakh for vice-president and 3-5 lakh for governor per month.
> The total revenue expenditure of the government is 21.57 lakh crore.
> 99 cities have been selected under the Smart City programme with an outlay of 2.09 lakh crore.
> The Railway capital expenditure for the year 2018-2019 is Rs1,48,528 crore. 600 major railway stations have been taken up for redevelopment. All the stations with more than 25000 footfalls will have escalators.
> A sum of 60 crores has been allocated for DRI( Disaster Resilient Infrastructure). And a huge sum of 3073 crores has been allocated for Digital India Programme which is nearly double the amount when compared to previous one.
> The government has allocated 7148 crores for the textile sector> The existing district hospitals will be upgraded and another 24 new government medical colleges will be set up in the country.
> The government has allocated a total sum of 56,619 crores for scheduled castes and 39,135 crores for scheduled tribes in this budget.
> The LPG connection scheme has been expanded to eight crore households this year.
