Union Budget 2018 Important budget's announcement
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday that India is expected to register a growth rate of 7.2-7.5% in the second half of the current fiscal and is on way to becoming the 5th largest economy of the world.
While unveiling the Budget 2018-19, the finance minister said, India has grown on an average of 7.5 per cent in the first three years of the current government and has become a USD 2.5 trillion economy. Here are the important announcements made by the finance minister Arun Jaitley.
* Rs 14.34 lakh crore to be spent for rural infrastructure. Eight crore free gas connections to women under UJJWALA and 4 crore electricity connections to the poor under Saubhagya Yojana
* Agri-Market Development Fund with a corpus of 2000 crore to be set up for developing agricultural markets. 470 APMCs have been connected to #eNAM network, the rest to be connected by March 2018
* Minimum Support Price of all crops shall be increased to at least 1.5 times that of the production cost. Allocation in for Ministry of Food Processing is being doubled; specialised agro-processing and financial institutions to be promoted by the government
* India now a $2.5 trillion economy and firmly on path to achieve 8% plus growth soon. Government to invest Rs 1 trillion in development of premium education infrastructure over next four years
* From Rs 10 lakh crore to Rs 11 lakh crore credit for agricultural activities
* Fishery and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund and Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Fund to be set up with corpus of Rs 10,000 crore
* Restructured National Bamboo Mission to be launched with allocation of Rs 1,290 crore to promote sector in a holistic manner
* Rs 500 crore for Operation Green
* Eklavya schools to be started for Scheduled Tribe population. Integrated B.Ed programme to be initiated for teachers to improve quality of teachers
* Propose to set up Rs 3 trillion plan for lending under Mudra scheme in 2018/19.
* Eight crore free gas connections to women under UJJWALA and 4 crore electricity connections to the poor under Saubhagya Yojana
* Have decided to take healthcare protection to a new aspirational level. Launching a flagship National Health Protection Scheme to cover 10 crore poor and vulnerable families, benefiting approximately 50 crore people
* Providing Rs 5 lakh per family per year for medical reimbursement, under National Health Protection Scheme. This will be world's largest health protection scheme
* Air pollution in Delhi NCR is a cause for concern; special scheme will be implemented to support Haryana, Punjab, UP and Delhi NCT to address this and subsidise machinery for management of crop residue
* Scheme for revitalising school infrastructure, with an allocation of Rs 1 lakh crore over four years. Called RISE - Revitalizing Infrastructure in School Education
* Government plans to construct two crore more toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission
* One government medical college to be ensured for every three parliamentary constituencies by upgrading 24 district-level colleges
* Govt will evolve a scheme to provide a unique ID to every enterprise on lines of Aadhaar
* Rs 1,48,528 crore capital expenditure for Indian Railways for 2018-19
* All trains to be progressively provided with Wi-Fi, CCTV and other state-of-the-art amenities
* UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) scheme will connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads
* Revised emoluments for President - Rs 5 lakh, Vice President - Rs 4 lakh and Governors - Rs 3.5 lakh; Automatic revision of MPs' emoluments every five years, indexed to inflation
* No change in personal income tax rates for salaried class