Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has presented his budget for 2018-19 in the parliament on Thursday. Speaking in the parliament, Jaitley hailed his government’s deminetisation step adding that it was received by honest tax-payers as ‘imaandari ka Utsav.’
Here are the key highlights of today’s budget announcement:
- Standard deduction of Rs 40,000 for salaried employees in lieu of transport, medical expense
- Government to launch public-funded flagship national health protection scheme to cover 10 crore poor families. Each family to get health cover for Rs 5 lakh every year.
- Propose 100% tax rebate for farmer producer companies having a turnover of Rs. 100 crore
- Tax payer base has risen from 6.47 crore in 2014-15 to 8.27 crore in 2016-17
- Contribution of 8.33% to EPF for new employees by the govt for three years and 12% govt contribution to EPF in sectors employing large number of people
- Gold monetisation scheme being revamped so that people can open gold deposit accounts in a hassle-free manner
- Emoluments of the President to be revised to Rs 5 lakh per month. Emoluments of the Vice-president to be revised to Rs 4 lakh per month
- The government is proposing changes in refixing salaries of MPs. Law will provide automatic revision of emoluments of the MPs every 5 years indexed to inflation
- Projected fiscal deficit for 2018-19 is 3.3% of GDP
- Will take all steps to eliminate the use of Crypto-Currencies, will encourage Blockchain technology in payment systems
- Redevelopment of 600 major railway stations has been taken up; Mumbai transport system is being expanded; suburban network of 160 km planned for Bengaluru
- All railways stations with more than 25,000 footfall to have escalators. All railways stations and trains to have Wi-Fi and CCTVs progressively