Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday raised the personal income tax rebate limit, doled out sops on small savings and announced one of the biggest hikes in capital spending in the past decade as she did a tight rope walk in the Budget between staying fiscally prudent and meeting public expectations in the year before general elections.
This is the full text of the address to the nation by President Droupadi Murmu on the eve of India's 78th Independence Day.
Jaitley's Budget has the potential to change the face of Modi's Bharat
'In the final analysis, all Budgets everywhere are like the schemes hatched by A A Milne's lovable Winnie-the-Pooh.' 'They may be well-intended, but often go awry.' 'Although Pooh and his friends agree that he 'has very little brain', he is occasionally acknowledged to have a clever idea, usually driven by common sense.' 'This Budget at a first glance does not appear to belong to that latter category,' says economist Shreekant Sambrani.
Capital expenditure (capex) by 54 large central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) and five departmental arms with an annual capex target of Rs 100 crore and above has reached around 42.5 per cent of their annual target of about Rs 7.33 trillion in this financial year so far, a senior official from the Ministry of Finance told Business Standard. "The Centre is pushing the big public undertakings in the infrastructure and refinery sector to achieve 90 per cent of their target by the end of the third quarter," he said. The capex by this group of CPSEs stands at around Rs 3.1 trillion in the April-August period so far.
Even as the Congress tired to shield Rahul Gandhi's surprise sabbatical ahead of the crucial Budget session, senior party leader Digvijaya Singh questioned his timing openly.
'If private capex has to kick in, there should at least be 2-3 years of visibility.'
Even as several trains have more than 200 waitlisted passengers every day, running some trains with so many vacant seats is a criminal waste of scarce resource.
Jaitley said a 10 per cent tax long on capital gains exceeding Rs 1 lakh made from the sale of shares has been introduced but those made till Janaury 31 would be grandfathered. A 10 per cent tax on distributed income by equity oriented mutual funds has also been proposed in the budget.
This will encompass the sale of Air India, a number of other privatisation initiatives, mergers, initial public offerings, the Centre's two exchange-traded funds, buybacks and offers-for-sale, and even monetisation of land assets.
Rajya Sabha will sit for late hours in last week of the first half of the budget session from Monday to clear the pending legislative and other businesses.
Economy to grow by 7.2-7.5 per cent in second half of current fiscal, says FM.
'The people of Tamil Nadu in particular Chennai know about the double standards of the BJP. Nothing will work for them here.'
On August 15 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced from the ramparts of the Red Fort that the Indian Railways would launch 75 Vande Bharat Express trains by August 2023. Later, in her 2022 Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that 400 Vande Bharat trains will be manufactured in the next three years, which are expected to cost between Rs 40,000 crore and Rs 50,000 crore. Those upbeat announcements come after a series of cancelled tenders, vigilance actions against officials and interdepartmental rivalry that delayed the addition of these iconic trains developed entirely indigenously by the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai.
This Budget plans for an increase to 10.3% of GDP from 9.9%.
Economic growth, which we are taking for granted, slows for a completely different set of local or global factors and the Modi premium vanishes, observes Debashis Basu.
The S&P BSE Sensex ended 80 points up at 23,789 while the Nifty50 closed at 7,235, up 24 points.
The Budget has evoked mixed reactions from Silicon Valley investors.
For its development, India needs a movement akin to the freedom movement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday.
Hygiene and cleanliness of trains and stations a must
Most expect the Budget to be path-breaking.
Industrial metals (ferrous and non-ferrous) suffered great volatility once the Ukraine War began in February 2022. First, there was a sharp price rise due to fears of supply disruption, followed by weak global demand. China's weakness and rolling lockdowns have hit production and demand.
India was among the top-five economies with the largest general government capital stock level, said, in 2015, an International Monetary Fund report called "Making Public Investment More Efficient". The report fuelled a debate on countries sitting on piles of cash that could be used better. India was believed to have public assets worth $4.5 trillion. The report urged countries to start asset recycling. Six years after the report, Australia's success in asset recycling has turned India into a believer; despite doing averagely in its previous efforts on roads, railways or meeting its divestment targets.
In Kerala, the use of black ranges from such convenience to strictures by community and religion to fashion and personal choice. One would have to be really insecure or too fond of the well settled life to see black solely as a badge of protest, points out Shyam G Menon.
'They have started becoming an important player, but not at the same level as they were in the earlier part of the decade.'
Noted economist and senior Trinamool Congress leader Amit Mitra is likely to step down as the West Bengal finance minister and even retire from active politics due to ill health, party sources said on Sunday.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee could be staring at troubled times ahead as the Saradha scam trail seemingly leads up to her doorstep.
Demonetisation hit informal sector hard and caused job losses which was not addressed by the budget, Moily said.
FM should avoid proposals such as to tax financial transactions and fringe benefits
'The bullet train project is a complete sham'
The dividends for the economy from such a rapid rise in capital expenditure would be huge, observes A K Bhattacharya.
The government should now focus on governance and monitoring the supply side to manage inflation, says M V Subramanian.
Index heavyweights Reliance Industries and ITC were the top losers along with ICICI Bank and SBI
Only 80.6 per cent of the Rs 6-trillion allocation has been spent by February, data from the Controller General of Accounts shows.
Equipped with facilities like water purifiers, mobile phone charging points and fire extinguishers among others, the first Antyodaya Express is slated to be pressed into service from Mumbai for Tatanagar this month.
The 15th Lok Sabha will go down in the history as the most disrupted in Independent India so far including the pepper spray incident which marked a new low in parliamentary conduct.
Nobody bothered to articulate the upsides; instead, the four-year tour of duty and denial of life-long pensions got played up.
Job-seekers for government and related opportunities found that their future was at risk, points out Shreekant Sambrani.
According to reports, public transport and banking services remain partly disrupted for the second day in some states.
Thirty-five Union ministers on Friday huddled in a strategy meeting for an image make-over for the government on a day when Congress began its foot march against the land bill from the symbolical Bhatta Parsaul village.
NDA government has shunned populism.
