Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a big ticket budget ahead of next year’s general elections which included huge capital outlay in infrastructure and agri sectors and reworked tax slabs in a relief to the middle class.
Here are some key announcements:
The government has outlined seven priority areas in the last complete budget before next year’s general elections. The areas, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, are “inclusive development, reaching the last mile, infrastructure and investment, unleashing the potential, green growth, youth power and financial sector”.
In a big push for income tax relief ahead of an election year, the government has reworked the income tax slabs in the new tax regime and said there will be no tax on income of upto ₹ 7 lakh a year — up from ₹ 5 lakh.
In the next fiscal, capital investment outlay will be raised by 33% to ₹ 10 lakh crore — which would be 3.3 per cent of the GDP in 2023-2024 fiscal, the finance minister said.
For the railways, the minister has announced an outlay of ₹ 2.4 lakh crore — the highest in almost a decade and four times the last year’s budget. “This is about nine times the outlay made in 2013-14,” she underlined, comparing it with the last year of the Congress-led UPA.