Budget 2017 has been disclosed and it is among the burning topics these days. The IMF has estimated the GDP growth of India to reach up to 3.4% in 2017. The theme of the budget is Transform, Energize and Clean India. The budget can be a point of discussion in the SSB and candidates are required to stay aware of the main points of it. Moving on to the crucial points of the budget, the following creamy gist of certain important fields are mentioned below.
Digitization – The government has stepped toward Adhaar based payment systems that will be soon released to ease the transactions. Referral benefits are also given to the users for referring the BHIM app to other users that is more secure and customer friendly. The budget has also targeted the banks to introduce 1 million more Point of Sale machines by March 2017 and 2 million Adhaar based systems by September 2017. It also aims at taking the digital transaction to 25 billion in 2017-2018 though USSD, UPI, debit cards, Adhaar pay and IMPS.
Agriculture – Budget allocation for agriculture has seen a great spurt in budget allocation. 1.87 lakh Crore has been allocated for agriculture, rural and allied sector. The allocation for ambitious MGNREGA has been taken to 48,000 Crore. Rs 9000 Crore has been fragmented out for crop insurance under Fasal Bima Yogna. Irrigation corpus has been doubled to 40,000 Crore and dairy processing corpus has been taken to 2,000 Crore.
Infrastructure – Infrastructure development is the need of hour for India. It is required to develop all other related fields. 2.4 lakh Crore has been allocated for rail, road and shipping development in 2017-18. 1 lakh Crore has been given for the rail safety for next 5 years. 20,000 kms of road would be built on the coastal areas to raise the connectivity. 1.5 lakh Panchayats will be provided with the high speed broadband under Bharatnet.
Housing – Housing has also been given priority in this budget. The fund for Pradaan Mantri Awas Yogna – Gramin has been raised from 15,000 to 23,000 Crore and a target of construction of 10 million houses by 2019 has been pointed by the authorities in the budget. The national housing bank will also refinance individual housing loans of approx. 20,000 Crore in 2017-18.
Ease For Entrepreneurs – The entrepreneurs have also been supported this time. The tax holiday for the new start-ups has been extended by 2 years. Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) credit carry forward period has been increased from 10 years to 15 years and income tax for companies having turnover up to 50 cores has been relaxed from 30% to 25%. Tax for slab of 2.5 to 5 lakh has been reduced from 10% to 5 %.
Curbing Black Money – The budget mentioned that the funds donated to the political parties have to be donated by either cheques or digital mode. The political parties can receive donations of maximum Rs. 2000 from one source. The cash transaction per person per day has been limited to 3 lakhs. All payments subjected to the TDS will require PAN card. Those businesses, which are paying out 10,000 per day will not be expected from Tax.
Apart from these above valuable changes, Budget has allocated 489 billion for health this time, which was 399 billion last year. Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) will be abolished and subsidies on food and fuel subsidies have been revised, but fertilizer subsidy has been kept unchanged.
Conclusion – The Budget has been termed as the thrusting force to drive the re-monetizing India. The allocation of budget has been maintained as per the requirement to take the nation to a more stable stage. The citizen of India were eying the budget to see the steps taken by government after demonetization. The above points will help the candidates in getting a summarized form of the budget and will help them to give out replies related to the budget 2017.
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