Finance Minister tabled union budget on 1st feb for Fiscal year 2022-2023 in just approx. 9000 words making it shortest budget speech.
The Union budget contains revenue's and expenditure for the end of particular fiscal year.it comprises the revenue budget and the capital budget.
In 2021, for the first time union budget in India was read out from a tablet.in preceding years, finance ministers used to carry budget documents in brown red briefcase, continuing british tradition but this changed when Nirmala sitharaman was termed as finance minister and replaced this with bahi khata or cloth ledger.
1. Health
- For the first time in budget government was seen concerned about mental health of citizens by establishing mental health counseling centers, a national tele mental health program will be launched.
- Two lakhs anganwadis to be upgraded to saksham anganwadis.
- Mission Shakti, saksham anganwadi and poshan 2.0 to be launched.
2. Education
- One class one tv channel programme to be expanded to 200 tv channels.
- Virtual labs and skilling e-labs to promote critical thinking.
- A digital university will be established with world class quality universal education.
3. Tax Proposals
- No direct benefit to salaried class employee.
- Allowing taxpayers to file updated return within 2 years for correcting errors.
- Tax relief to persons with disability.
- Increasing tax deduction limit on employer's contribution to NPS account of state government employees.
- Income from transfer of virtual assets to be taxed at 30%.
- Unblended fuel shall attract additional differential excise duty.
- Better litigation management to avoid repetitive appeals.
- Rationalization of exemptions on implements and tools for agri sector manufactured in india.
4. Welfare schemes
- Har ghar, nal se jal yojana – government targets to cover 3.8 crore households in 2022-23.
- PM awas yojana – 80 lakhs houses to be completed in 2022-23.
- Digital banking by post offices – 100% of post offices to come under core banking system.
- PM devine – to fund infrastructure and social development based on felt needs of the north east.
5. Agriculture sector
- Promoting chemical free natural farming with lands close to river ganga.
- Delivery of digital hi-tech services to farmers.
- Launching firms to finance agriculture start ups
6. PM Gatishakti Yojana
- Formulation of master plan for expressways, completing 25000km national highways in 2022-23.
- Multimodal connectivity between urban transport and railway stations.
- Integration of postal and railways network facilitating parcel movement.
- 400 new generation of vande bharat times.
7. Ease of doing business
- Opening up defence R & D for industry,startups and academia.
- End to end online e-bill system and utilizing surety bonds in government procurement.
- Establishing C-PACE to facilitate voluntary winding up of companies.
- Animation, visual effects, gaming and comic (AVGC) promotion task force with all stakeholders to be set up to recommend ways to employ youth in this sector.
- Expanding scope of PARIVESH portal. It is web based portal for environmental management system.
8. Electric vehicles
- The centre is planning to come out with a battery swapping policy for electric vehicles,
Considering space constraint in urban areas for setting up charging stations at scale .
- Private sector will be encouraged to develop sustainable and innovative business models for batteries for electric vehicles.
- Further announcements will be made to develop EV's infrastructure and increase the use of public transport.
Middle class taxpayers were expecting increase in limits of standard deduction but this was not taken into consideration in this budget. Further deductions under 80c are still same. Deduction for preventive health scheme is still five thousand rupees it should be increased considering covid situations.
This budget was boost for various sectors but for middle class taxpayers it was like better luck next time.
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