India’s Budget pledges spending on infrastructure, social needs

NEW DELHI – In his Budget speech yesterday, India’s Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, pledged huge infrastructure and social expenditure to put India on course to achieve 8%-plus GDP growth. The Budget covers the period April 2018-March 2019. The Budget address identified 372 specific business reform actions to improve ease of doing business.

Some Budget highlights (figures have been converted to Australian dollars) -

An AUD16 billion disinvestment target for 2018-19; the target for 2017-18 has been exceeded and will reach Rs.1 lakh crore (AUD 20 billion).
To benefit small, micro and medium enterprises, a corporate tax cut of 25% was extended to companies with turnover of up to AUD 50 million.
AUD 758.8 million was allocated to the MSME sector in the form of capital support and interest subsidy by 2022. AUD 92 billion was sanctioned under the MUDRA Scheme to finance MSMEs.
The Government will fund 12% of wages for new employees through the Employees' Provident Fund in all sectors. The take-home salary of new women employees will to go up in the formal sector.
The Government is to create employment equivalent to 3.21 billion person days, building .317 million km of rural roads, 5.1 million new rural houses and 18.8 million toilets, while providing 17.5 million new household electric connections to boost agricultural growth
To boost agricultural-related sectors, the Government will set up a fisheries and aquaculture infra fund and an animal husbandry infra fund with an outlay of AUD 2 billion.
An Agri-Market Development Fund of AUD 400 million will be set up to develop agricultural markets., with the food processing sector to grow at 8%. The allocation for food processing has been doubled from AUD140 million to AUD280 million.
There will be 100% tax deduction for companies registered as Farmer Producer Companies having an annual turnover up to AUD20 million for five years from financial year 2018-19.
AUD286.8 billion is to be spent for rural infrastructure.  
National highways exceeding 9,000-km will be completed in 2018-19.
99 cities have been selected for smart cities projects with an outlay of AUD40.8 billion.
10 million houses are to be built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana programme in rural areas. By 2025, 110 million houses will be constructed and allotted under a ‘housing for all’ scheme.        
36,000-km of rail track renewal is targetted for the coming year. 
The Government is to expand airport capacity five-fold to cater for one billion passengers trips a year. A regional air connectivity scheme will connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads. 
* The budget for health, education and social security is increased to AUD 27.6 billion for 2018-19 from 24.4 billion in the current fiscal year.

The Government is to launch a flagship National Health Protection scheme to cover 100 million poor and vulnerable people; and to set up 24 new medical colleges and hospitals by upgrading district level ones.
A scheme for revitalising school infrastructure has an allocation of AUD 20 billion over four years.  
* Digital India will focus on driving digital payments in India and boosting the optical fibre network in rural areas to improve internet connectivity and access. 500,000 WiFi hotspots to provide broadband access to 50 million rural people.  (ATI).