Highlights of India’s Union Budget 2018-19

Highlights of India’s Union Budget 2018-19

The 2018-19 Union Budget presented by the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

• According to FM in the Union Budget, India is expected to become the fifth largest economy (2.5 trillion dollar) very soon and the Growth rate is expected between 7.2-7.5%.

Following are the highlights of Mr. Jaitley's Budget speech:

Agriculture and Rural Economy

• The Minimum Support Price (MSP) will be 1.5 times the production cost of their Kharif crops.
• An Agri-Market Infrastructure Fund with a corpus of Rs. 2000 crore will be set up for developing and upgrading agricultural marketing infrastructure in the 22000 Grameen Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) and 585 APMCs.
• Prime Minister Krishi Sampada Yojana is our flagship programme for boosting investment in food processing Rs. 1400 crore in 2018-19((last year Rs 715 crore)).
• The government will promote the establishment of specialized agro-processing financial institutions in this sector.
• Rs 1290 crore allocated for restructured bamboo production mission.
• Setting up of Fishery and Aquaculture fund and Animal Husbandry fund with the total corpus of Rs 10000 crore.
• Operation Green will be launched for agriculture with the corpus of Rs 500 crore.
• Propose to launch a Re-structured National Bamboo Mission with an outlay of Rs.1290 crore to promote the bamboo (Green Gold) sector in a holistic manner.
• Propose to extend the facility of Kisan Credit Cards to fisheries and animal husbandry farmers to help them meet their working capital needs.
• Long-Term Irrigation Fund (LTIF) in NABARD for meeting funding requirement of irrigation works, expanded to cover specified command area development projects.

Social Protection

• The free LPG connection scheme (Ujjwala Yojana) will be expanded to 8 crores households.
• The government will provide free 4 crore electricity connections to the poor under Saubhagya Yojana.
• Kisan credit card to be extended to fisheries, animal husbandry farmers.
• A dedicated affordable housing fund will be set up this year.
• Loans to self-help groups will increase to Rs 75000 crore. 
• Govt. allocated Rs.5,750 crore to National Livelihood Mission and Rs. 2,600 crore to the groundwater irrigation scheme.

Health Sector

• Allocation on National Social Assistance Programme this year has been kept at Rs. 9975 crores.
• The Union Govt. is launching world's largest government-funded healthcare program, Rashtriya Samaj Beema Yojana. 
• This will have 50 crore beneficiaries and 10 crore families will get 5 lakh per year for their families to cover secondary and tertiary hospital expenses.
• The government will provide Rs 600 crore as nutritional support to all Tuberculosis (TB) patients.
• Twenty four new government medical colleges will be set up by upgrading existing district hospitals in the country.
• Allocation on National Social Assistance Programme this year has been kept at Rs. 9975 crores.

MSME sector & Employment

• Govt. have provided Rs. 3794 crore to MSME Sector for giving credit support, capital and interest subsidy and innovations.
• The Online loan sanctioning facility will be refurbished to speed up the complete process by banks.
• Rs 3 lakh crore is allocated as the target for the Mudra Yojana for the year 2018-19.
• The government will contribute 12% of wages of new employees for all sectors.
• Woman's contribution to the Provident Fund will be reduced to 8% from now onwards for the first 3 years of her employment with no reduction in employer's contribution.
• The launch of National Apprenticeship Scheme with stipend support and sharing of the cost of basic training to give training to 50 lakh youth by 2020.
• The Government will contribute 12% of the wages of the new employees in the EPF for all the sectors for next three years.
• 306 Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra has been established for imparting skill training through such centers.

Infrastructure and Transport

• Smart Cities Mission aims at building 100 Smart Cities with state-of-the-art amenities. 
• 99 Cities have been selected with an outlay of Rs. 2.04 lakh crore.
• Rs 1.48 lakh crore have been allocated for the Indian Railways for the year 2018-19. 
• In Railways, 18,000 km of doubling of tracks would eliminate capacity constraints.
• Eastern and Western dedicated freight corridor and special attention to the maintenance of track infrastructure.
• All railways stations (more than 25000 footfalls) will have escalators and 600 railway stations to be redeveloped
• 150 km additional suburban railway network at the cost of Rs. 40,000 cr.
• An institute is under its way at Vadodara to train manpower for high-speed railway projects.
• Now, UDAN scheme will connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads in the country. 
• Airport capacity will now be enhanced to handle more than one billion trips every year.
• Over 3,600 km of track renewal is being targeted in 2018-19.

Financial Sector

• Niti Aayog to establish a national program to direct efforts in artificial intelligence towards national development.
• Explore the use of blockchain technology proactively to boost digital economy.
• Scheme to assign every enterprise a unique ID just like Aadhaar. 
• Toll payments by cash will be digitized.
• Commerce Ministry will develop a National Logistics Portal as a single window program to boost the logistics sector.
• The Union government will recapitalize public sector banks to help them lend an additional Rs. 5 lakh crore. 
• The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management will come up with debt Exchange Traded Fund.
• GST revenue for only 11 months, instead of the usual 12 months, is 21.5 lakh crore. 
• Three Insurance Companies (United India Assurance Company Limited, Oriental Insurance & National Insurance) will be merged and then listed.
• Salaries of President (Rs. 5 lakh), VP (Rs 4.0 lakh), and Governors (Rs 3.5 lakh) will be increased and salaries of Members of Parliament will also be raised. 

Education Sector

• Education holistically without segmentation from pre-nursery to Class 12. 
• For teachers, an integrated B.Ed. the programme will be initiated.
• RISE (Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education) Scheme for revitalizing school infrastructure, with an allocation of 1 lakh crore rupees over four years (by 2022). 
• Two new full-fledged schools of planning and architecture will be set up.
• Prime Minister's fellowship programme will be launched to subsidize research.
• To increase the digital intensity in education and move gradually from ‘‘black board’’ to ‘‘digital board’’.
• Technology will also be used to upgrade the skills of teachers through the recently launched digital portal ‘‘DIKSHA".
• Prime Minister’s Research Fellows (PMRF)’’ Scheme, Each year 1,000 best B.Tech students from premier institutions and provide facilities to do Ph.D. in IITs and IISc, with a handsome fellowship.
• Every block with more than 50% ST population and at least 20,000 tribal people will have'Ekalavya' school at par with Navodaya Vidyalas by 2022.

Taxation Reforms

• The total expenditure of the Union government will be Rs 21.57 lakh crore.
• The projected fiscal deficit of the FY 2018-19 is 3.3% of the GDP.
• January 2018, the growth rate of 18.7% has been recorded and Over 85 lakh new taxpayers filed their returns. 
• The number of effective taxpayers increased from 6.47 lakh crore to 8.27 lakh crore in the previous financial year. 
• The excess revenue from personal income tax is Rs 90000 crore.
• 100 percent tax deduction to farmer-producer companies having Rs 100 crore turnover. 
• Corporate tax will be reduced to 25% for companies having a turnover of up to Rs 250 crore.
• A long-term capital gains tax of 10% will be levied for amounts exceeding Rs 1 lakh.
• 12.6% growth in direct taxes in 2017-18.
• 18.7% growth in indirect taxes in 2017-18.
• Rs 40,000 standard deduction against travel and medical expenses.
• Surcharge of 10% on income above Rs 50 lakh but less than Rs 1 cr, 15% on income above Rs 1 cr to continue.
• Senior citizens will be able to claim the benefit of the deduction up to Rs 50,000 annually on health insurance premium and/or general medical expenditure incurred.

 Personal income tax

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