NEW DELHI, Feb 1: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced a Rs 11.11 lakh crore spending on infrastructure and vowed to continue reforms as she resisted resorting to populist measures in Modi government’s last budget before general elections, instead choosing to stay on the path of cutting deficit while bolstering measures for focus groups.
Her interim budget for fiscal year beginning April 2024 followed the convention to remain a vote on account with no major policy announcement and no changes in income tax rates for individuals and corporates, as well as import duty, but offered amnesty for disputed income tax demands of the period prior to 2014-15 as a relief to small taxpayers.
In her close to an hour-long Budget speech in the Lok Sabha, she listed her government’s achievements across sectors in the last 10 years and announced measures to boost tourism, housing and renewable energy.
There is a renewed focus on agriculture/rural economy to course correct to some extent the skewed outcome of the ongoing economic growth even though there was no increase in the amount transferred to farmers under the PM Kisan scheme.
Giving a sneak preview of what will be the Modi government’s priority in the third term, if re-elected, she said economic policies that foster and sustain growth, facilitate inclusive development and contribute to generation of resources to power investments will be adopted towards making India a developed country by 2047.
“The next five years will be years of unprecedented development and golden moments to realise the dream of developed India by 2047,” she said.
The interim Budget seeks Parliament’s authorisation for spending for four months and the full Budget for the fiscal year starting April will be presented in July by the government elected in April-May general elections.
Sitharaman’s Budget proposes to cut food, fertiliser and fuel subsidies by 8 per cent in 2024-25 over last year while keeping the allocation for rural employment scheme MGNREGA unchanged.
She announced construction of 2 crore more affordable houses and a scheme for housing for the middle class, formulation of a comprehensive programme for supporting dairy farmers, and enhancing aquaculture productivity to 5 tonnes per hectare from existing 3 tonnes per hectare.
Spending on infrastructure such as roads, ports and airports has been raised by 11 per cent to Rs 11.1 lakh crore in a bid to sustain the current world-record beating economic growth and create more jobs.
The Union government will also provide Rs 1.3 lakh crore long term loans to states to spend on infrastructure.
On tax measures, the finance minister announced that investments by sovereign wealth funds and pension funds will be tax-free for one more year. Total revenue receipts for 2024-25 were estimated at Rs 30 lakh crore as compared to revised estimate of Rs 26.99 lakh crore in the previous year. Tax-GDP ratio is seen at 11.7 per cent as opposed to 11.6 per cent of GDP in 2023-24.
Among the headline announcements in the Budget are rooftop solar installations at one crore households to deliver up to 300 free units of electricity per month, a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore for innovation and technology by providing financing at low or nil interest rates, and a new scheme to strengthen deep tech in the defence sector. (PTI)
