Highlights: Budget 2018
NEW DELHI: Highlights of the Union Budget for 2018-19 presented in the Lok Sabha by Finance Minister Arun Jaitly on Thursday:
- Rs 80,000 crore disinvestment target for 2018-19, target for 2017-18 has been exceeded and will reach Rs 1 lakh crore
- Government insurance companies to be merged into a single entity, and subsequently listed in the stock exchange, as part of the disinvestment programme
- National Logistics Portal as a single online window to link all stakeholders, to be developed by Department of Commerce
- Foundation stone of the bullet train was laid in September 2017. An institute is coming up in Vadodara to train the manpower required for the high speed railway projects
- 12,000 wagons, 5160 coaches and 700 locomotives being procured. There is significant achievements of physical targets by railways
- Road construction has scaled new heights, confident that 9000 km highway construction will be complete by 2017-18
- National Committee chaired by PM, including CMs, Gandhians and representatives from various walks of life for year-long commemoration of 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi
- 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
- NITI Aayog will establish a National Programme to direct efforts in the area of Artificial Intelligence towards national development
- Five lakh Wi-Fi hotspots to be set up in rural areas to provide easy internet access
- Government to take all steps to eliminate use of cryptocurrencies which are being used to fund illegitimate transactions
- Individual enterprises too to have unique ID
- Government plans to construct two crore more toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission
- Rs 7,148 crore outlay for textile sector in 2018-19
- One government medical college to be ensured for every three parliamentary constituencies by upgrading 24 district-level colleges
- Hard work of farmers resulted in a record production of more than 275 million tonnes of foodgrain and about 300 million tonnes of horticultural produce
- Not only focussing on 'Ease of Doing Business' but also 'Ease of Living'
- 70 lakh formal jobs have been created this year. Government will contribute 12 per cent of the wages as EPF in all sectors for the next three years
- Mass formalisation of MSME sector is happening after demonetisation and GST
- 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
- Government is slowly but steadily progressing towards universal health coverage
- 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
- Eklavya schools to be started for Scheduled Tribe population
- By 2022, every block with more than 50 per cent ST population and at least 20,000 tribal people will have 'Ekalavya' school at par with Navodaya Vidyalas
- Integrated B.Ed programme to be initiated for teachers to improve quality of teachers
- India is firmly on path to achieve 8 per cent plus growth
- Propose to raise institutional credit for agriculture to Rs 11 lakh Crore for 2018-19
- 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
- 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
- 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
- From ease of doing business, government has moved to ease of living for the poor and middle class
- 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
- Will focus on agriculture and rural economy, health, infra, senior citizens
- Hope to grow at 7.2 per cent-7.5 per cent in the second half of 2017-18
- Allocating natural resources in a more transparent manner, there is a premium on honesty now
- Government led by PM Modi has implemented a series of fundamental structural reforms