Schemes For Digital India From Budget Speech 2017-18

As the country watches with bated breath, one of India’s largest employers and money makers, the auto industry is hoping that for a favourable budget this time around. The ratings company expects the deficit targets to be achieved, although there will be limited room for slippage.

The allocation for the scheme for the Benefit of North Eastern Area, has been revised to Rs 148.4 crore this year as compared to Rs 131.33 crore last year.

India’s GDP decelerated to 7.1% during the last quarter of 2016.

However, the worst of the cash crunch is now over and Jaitley said that he expected it would not spill over into the fiscal year starting on April 1.

As for the middle class, the bulwark of India’s economic growth, there is little to cheer in the tax proposals which Jaitley outlined his Budget proposals for 2017-18.

The money allocated for defence pensions is Rs 85,737 crore, a year-on-year hike of 4.13%. The committee has approved a debt-to-GDP ratio at 60% for general government by 2023, including 40% for central government and 20% for state government. 4000 crores allotted to train for market oriented training.

Among key issues from the Stay-in-India checklist which were expected to be addressed in the budget but have been missed out are angel tax and tax parity between listed and unlisted securities.

The budget has been allocated to incentivise and subsidise the farm and rural parts of India. The objective is to double the farmer income in five years. The FM said the Budget had been crafted to put a special focus on the rural and agricultural sector and the poor, among others – sections hit hard by the currency withdrawal. “The new status will increase the resource allocation for the sector, catalysing housing supply and reducing the supply gap”.

He also announced a funding increase for a massive rural household employment guarantee scheme, called the MGNREGA, and for rural infrastructure projects on roads, electricity, sanitation and drinking water. The major focus was also on start-ups, and, investors.

For the transportation sector as a whole, an outlay of 2.41 trillion rupees has been fixed for 2017-18. He also said the government had identified 2,000 km of coastal roads that will be built to facilitate better connectivity between ports and remote villages. Tier-II city airport operations and management will hopefully now take off, improving services and connectivity, aided by the recent regional air connectivity program. This will be partly offset by an increase in the tax rates further up; a new slab of taxpayers has been created, with income between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore, who will pay a ten% surcharge on their taxes. The biggest disappointment though was the piffling ₹10,000 crore allocation to bank recapitalisation. This will reduce the tax liability of banks.

“There was an expectation of an across-the-board reduction in corporate tax”, said Abhishek Goenka, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers India. The Minimum Alternate Tax is presently levied as an advance tax. Ahead of the GST’s expected launch from July 1, Jaitley may increase the service tax rate to bring it into line with the proposed standard rate under the new tax regime.

In order to enable swifter completion of assessments, this time limit for filing of revised returns has been reduced to one year from the end of the tax year. New Centralised Online Booking System for Soldiers The New Centralised Defence Travel System is introduced to help soldiers and defence personals to make their travel needs easy. “The Budget is aimed at all-round development”, Shah said. “Transformative measures have to be undertaken to make Indian Railways competitive and retain their position of pre-eminence”, he observed, announcing that the railways will implement an end-to-end integrated transport solution for select commodities through partnership with logistics players.