Budget 2018-19 Analysis

-- $2.5 Trillion economy

-- 5th largest in the world
-- Our economy is on course to achieve high growth rate of 8%
-- Average Growth of ~7.5% in last 3 years

Budget 2018-19 focusing on four aspects :

1. Strengthening of agriculture
2. Education
3. healthcare benefits
4. Improving infrastructure
Indian society, polity and economy have shown remarkable resilience in adjusting with structural reforms
‘‘Minimum Government and Maximum Governance’

'Ease of Living' for the common man

✓ DBTs
✓ LPG connection
✓ Electricity connection
✓ Cheaper healthcare
✓ Online govt services/ticketing
✓ Attestation
✓ No interview for Group C and D

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Agriculture and Rural Economy
• Minimum Support Price of all crops shall be increased to at least
1.5 times that of the production cost. (Earlier only for Rabi)
• Agricultural Production is at the highest ever –
Food grains 275 MT
Fruits and Vege. 300 MT

• 470 APMCs connected to e-NAM markets, rest by March 2018

• 22000 rural ‘haats’ to be upgraded to Grameen Agricultural Markets
GrAMs
• Rs.2000 crore fund to be set up for infrastructure in GrAMs
• Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana to connect higher secondary
schools, hospitals in its phase III

Operation Greens –
➢ Tomato, onion and potato
➢ To promote farmer co-ops and food processing.
➢ Rs 500 crore funding.
• State of art 42 mega food parks proposed
• Prime Minister Krishi Sampada Yojana - for boosting investment in food
processing
• Organic farming, women self help groups to be encouraged

• Extension of Kisan credit card to fisheries and animal husbandry

• Rs 10,000 crore for
Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Fund
Animal husbandry infra fund
• Restructured Bamboo mission with a fund of Rs 1290 crore
• Special scheme to be implemented to support the govts of Haryana and
Delhi NCR in dealing with the crop residue to bring down air pollution in
Delhi

Flagship programmes for the Rural poor/Rural Economy

• LPG connections - 8 crore
• Toilets - 2 crore
• Electricity connections - 4 crore homes
• Housing for all by 2022
• 37% increase in loans to SHG
• 2600 crore for irrigation
14.34 lakh crore for Rural Livelihood, agricultural and rural Infrastructure

HEALTH
‘‘Ayushman Bharat’’ programme
• Aimed at making path breaking interventions to address health
holistically, in primary, secondary and tertiary care system
• covering both prevention and health promotion.
• Rs 1200 crore allocated for the programme.

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• 2 initiatives in this programme – Health centres and NHPS

1. Health centres
• 1.5 Lakh Health and Wellness Centres as the foundation of India’s health system.
• These centres will bring health care system closer to the homes of people
• Focus on maternal and child health services.
• Shall provide free essential drugs and diagnostic services.

2. National Health Protection Scheme

• To cover 10 crore poor families (approximately 50 crore beneficiaries)

• providing coverage up to 5 lakh rupees per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization.

• This will be the world’s largest government funded health care programme.

• 600 crore to provide nutritional support to all TB patients at the rate of

`500 per month
• 24new medical colleges and hospitals by upgrading district hospitals.
• One medical college for every three parliamentary constituencies = 180
new medical colleges

Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan (GOBAR-DHAN)

for management and conversion of cattle dung and solid waste in farms to
compost, fertilizer, bio-gas and bio-CNG.

Model Districts for Development

• 115 aspirational districts taking various indices of development in
consideration.
• The Government aims at improving the quality of life in these districts
• Health, education, nutrition, skill upgradation, financial inclusion
• infrastructure like irrigation, rural electrification, potable drinking water
and access to toilets at an accelerated pace and in a time bound manner.

Allocation of
56,619 crore for SCs
And
39,135 crore for STs
in BE 2018-19.

Government’s estimated schematic budgetary expenditure on

health, education and social protection
for 2018-19 is 1.38 lakh crore
estimated expenditure of 1.22 lakh crore in BE 2017-18

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EDUCATION
• By 2022, every block with more than 50% ST population and at least 20,000 tribal people will have
'Ekalavya' school at par with Navodaya Vidyalas
• Focus on Learning Outcome and Quality Education.
• Improvement in Quality of Teachers - integrated B.Ed. Programme
• More than 13 Lakh Teachers to be trained as per RTE Act requirement.
• Shift to Digital Board from Black Board - Digital portal ‘‘DIKSHA’’.

• ‘Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education (RISE) by 2022

• total investment of 1,00,000 crore in next four years.
• Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA)
• Railways University at Vadodara
• 2 new Schools of Planning and Architecture
• ‘‘Prime Minister’s Research Fellows (PMRF)’’ - Govt will identify 1000 B.Tech
students each years and provide them to do PHDs in IIT and IISc, while also teaching
undergraduate students once a week at that time.

Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs) and Employment

• 3794 crore to MSME Sector for giving credit support, capital and interest
subsidy and innovations
• formalization of the businesses of MSMEs is taking place in the country
after demonetization and introduction of GST
• Big Data on MSMEs

• MUDRA Yojana has led to sanction of 4.6 lakh crore in credit from 10.38
crore MUDRA loans since 2015 launch
• 76% of loan accounts are of women and more than 50% belong to SCs,
STs and OBCs.
• It is proposed to set a target of 3 lakh crore for lending under MUDRA for
2018-19
• 70 lakh formal jobs will be created this year.

Employee Provident Fund (EPF) –

• Reduction in women employees' contribution to 8% for first 3 years of their employment against existing rate
of 12% or 10% with no change in employers' contribution.
• Contribution of 8.33% for new employees by the Government for 3 years.
• Contribution of 12% to EPF for new employees for 3 years by the
Government in sectors employing large number of people like textile, leather and footwear.

Infrastructure
• Rs. 50 lakh crore in infrastructure is required
• SMART cities, HRUDAY, AMRUT - Flagship schemes
ROADS
• 9000 km of Highways in 2017-18
• BHARATMALA - To develop 35,000 KM under phase 1 with an outlay of

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Rs 5.35 lakh crore
• Rohtang tunnel , Zozila tunnel. Now Sela Pass

RAILWAYS
• Railways’ Cap. ex. for the year 2018-19 has been pegged at 1,48,528
crore
• 18000 + 5000 km of track work
• COMPLETE CONVERSION TO BROAD GAUGE
• Eastern and Western dedicated Freight Corridors
• 160 km suburban railway network at a cost of 17,000 crore in and around
Bengaluru
• A ‘Safety First’ policy - ‘Fog Safe’’ and ‘‘Train Protection and Warning
System’’, 3600 km track renewal
• Wi-Fi,CCTVs in all trains and stations
• Escalators – 25k+ footfall

AIR
• UDAN - 56 unserved air airport to be connected , operations has started
in 16 unserved airport
• 900 new aircrafts
• 18% annual growth in traffic
• 124 airports - make capacity 5 times
Disaster Resilient Infrastructure – 60 crore

Financial and Digital Sector

• Doubled the allocation on Digital India programme to 3073 crore in 2018-19.
• Bharatnet - connected one lakh gram panchayat through high speed optical
fiber network in Phase I . Now Phase II – 2.5 lakh GPs to be connected
• Setup five lakh Wi-Fi hotspots which will provide broadband access to five
crore rural citizens
• Indigenous 5G Test Bed at IIT, Chennai.

• The Government will explore use of block chain technology proactively

for ushering in digital economy.
• The government does not consider crypto currencies as legal tender or
coin and (will) take all measures to eliminate the use of crypto assets
• NITI Aayog to initiate a national programme on Artificial Intelligence(AI)
• Centres of excellence to be set up on robotics, AI, Internet of things

PSUs
• 1,00,000 crore in 2017-18 from disinvestment of PSUs
• Target of 80,000 crore for 2018-19.
• Process of acquisition of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation by the ONGC
has been successfully completed.

• Three public sector general insurance companies

National Insurance Company Ltd.

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United India Assurance Company Limited
Oriental India Insurance Company Limited
will be merged into a single insurance entity and will be subsequently listed.

Increased salaries
President - 1.5 to 5 lakh
Vice President - 1.25 to 4 lakh
Governor - 1.10 to 3.5 lakh
Salary revisions for Members of Parliament every 5 years Will be indexed to inflation.

FISCAL MANAGEMENT
Fiscal deficit for
FY18 (2017-18) - 3.5% of GDP (5.95 lakh crore)
FY19 (2018-19) - 3.3% of GDP (prediction)
*Fiscal deficit is the difference between total expenditure of the government and sum of its revenue receipts,
recovery of loans and other receipts

• GST revenue will be received only for 11 months, that will have an effect on balance sheets
• GST collections projection pegged at Rs 7.43 lakh crore in full year 2018- 19 as against Rs 4.44 lakh crore in
9 months of current fiscal.
• Growth in direct taxes (till Jan 15) is 18.7 %
• Reducing the cash economy and for increasing the tax net
• In financial year 2016-17, 85.51 Lakhs new taxpayers filed their returns of income as against 66.26 Lakhs

• No change in tax slabs for income tax on salaried class.

• A standard deduction of Rs 40,000 has been allowed to them**
• Salaried class have been paying more tax than individual business owners
• Education cess increased to 4% from 3% to collect additional Rs 11,000 crore for ‘HEALTH AND
EDUCATION’
**Medical and transport reimbursements removed so net benefit of only 5800

For senior citizens:

• Exemption of interest income on deposits with banks and post offices to
be increased from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000.
• Hike in deduction limit for health insurance premium and/ or medical
expenditure from Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 50,000 under section 80D.
• Increase in deduction limit for medical expenditure for critical illness
from Rs. 60,000 (senior citizens) and from Rs. 80,000 (very senior
citizens) to Rs. 1 lakh for all senior citizens, under section 80DDB.

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• 25% corporate tax rate on companies with revenue up to Rs 250 crore.
50 crore earlier
99% companies benefited
• Long term capital gains over Rs 1 lakh to be taxed at 10%
• Short term capital tax remains at 15%
• Equity Oriented Mutual Funds will now face a dividend distribution tax of 10%

100% tax deduction is already allowed to co-operative societies helping farmers

Now 100% tax deduction will also be available to

Farmer Producer Companies that have been set up along the lines of cooperative
societies with a turnover of Rs 100 Crore and above (for the first five years)

Central Board of Excise and Customs [CBEC]

to
Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC).

Petroleum/ Diesel Sector

Excise duty cut by 2 + 6 rupees
Road cess increased by 8 rupees

• Customs duty on mobile phones and TVs to be increased (Boost to Make In

India!)
• Import of solar tempered glass for manufacture of solar cells exempted from
customs duty.
• Rs 150 cr to commemorate 150 years of birth of Mahatma Gandhi

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