Highlights: Budget 2019 Presented With A 10-Year Horizon, Says Sitharaman
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to boost spending and provide income tax relief to consumers in Budget 2019.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Customs, Excise Duty Hike To Boost Government Earnings By Rs 25,000 Crore
The government will earn a net Rs 25,000 crore from the increase in customs and excise duty on a host of products, including cigarettes. The surcharge on the super-rich would help garner an additional income of around Rs12,000 crore this fiscal on the direct tax side.
Budget 2019: Agriculture Ministry Gets 78% More Allocation In 2019-20
The government has proposed to increase budget allocation for the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare by over 78 percent to Rs 1.39 lakh crore for the current financial year.
Out of this, Rs 75,000 crore will be for the flagship scheme Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, according to the budget document.
The government had allocated Rs 77,752 crore in the revised estimate for 2018-19.
What Finance Ministry Officials Are Saying About Budget 2019
As the country reads into the fineprint of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Union Budget 2019, finance ministry officials spoke about their views on the fiscal document.(read more)
Railways Capex Outlay Highest Ever In Budget 2019
Indian Railways received a budgetary allocation of Rs 65,837 crore, and the highest-ever outlay for capital expenditure amounting to Rs 1.60 lakh crore from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Union Budget 2019. Last year, the capex outlay for the railways was Rs 1.48 lakh crore while the budgetary allocation was Rs 55,088 crore.
In Budget 2019, funds of Rs 7,255 crore have been allocated for construction of new lines, Rs 2,200 crore for gauge conversion, Rs 700 crore for doubling, Rs 6,114.82 crore for rolling stock, and Rs 1,750 crore for signalling and telecom. The allocations have remained the same as in the interim budget in February, which was presented by the then Interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal.
Ex-RBI Governor C Rangarajan Thinks Sovereign Foreign Currency Borrowing Is A Bad Idea
India’s plan to borrow in foreign currency, to supplement domestic borrowings, is a bad idea, according to former Reserve Bank of India Governor C Rangarajan. “We have discussed this since early 90s, right after liberalisation,” he told BloombergQuint in an interaction. “We have discussed it’s much better that sovereign borrowing in foreign currency should be avoided.”
India’s external debt is currently low and the government will now start to borrow a part of its funding requirement from the overseas market in foreign currency, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her budget speech today.
