Leaving direct taxes untouched, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today slashed excise duty on cars, SUVs and two-wheelers, and capital goods and consumer durables to boost manufacturing and growth.
Excise duty cut for auto company is a great boon for the sectors, expert feels.
In his interim budget on February 17, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the fiscal deficit would not cross 4.6 per cent of GDP, revising an earlier target of 4.8 per cent.
In the 2012-13, car sales in India fell 6.69 per cent, which was the first decline in a decade.
The price reduction across passenger vehicles is in the range of Rs 6,300 to Rs 69,000.
The Air Force will see its funding slashed, endangering its plan to buy 126 French Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft.
Excise duty cut can halve current inventory in 2 months, with major manufacturers promising to pass on benefit.
The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security was allocated Rs 40 crore (Rs 400 million) for procurement of security and IT items along with radiological detection equipment.
The 50-share NSE index Nifty rose by 24.95 points, or 0.41 per cent, to settle at 6,073.30.
The government cut its disinvestment target by more than half for the current financial year and pegged the proceeds at Rs 36,925 crore for 2014-15.
The government on Monday said the fiscal deficit for the current financial year will be contained at 4.6 per cent of GDP.
For the modernisation of the armed forces, the Finance Minister allocated an additional Rs 5,000 crore.
In the run-up to the Union Budget, expected to be presented on July 10, this paints a grim picture for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
The government on Monday indicated that it may tinker with the excise duties and service tax rates in the interim budget in an apparent bid to boost economy but may not pursue key reforms legislations due to lack of political consensus.
Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia vacates his post on November 30 and Expenditure Secretary Ajay Narayan Jha, the second seniormost bureaucrat in the finance ministry, retires on January 31, the day before Jaitley presents the 2019-20 interim budget.
The dates of general elections in 2019 and the presentation of the final Budget of the Modi government are so far removed from each other that Jaitley is not under any pressure to present a populist Budget. Instead, he could well unveil an array of schemes and proposals that he believes are necessary for the economy, even if a few of them could be unpopular, says A K Bhattacharya.
Will this be a 'political' Budget? Or, will the Budget be able to take the country back to growth path?
Jaitley, who was the finance minister before a medical procedure led to the charge being temporarily taken away from him, missed presenting the sixth and final Budget of the Narendra Modi government before the general elections. In his absence, the charge of the ministry was given to Railways Minister Piyush Goyal.
Modi slammed the opposition alleging they "remember farmers once in 10 years -- just before elections".
The government has already sanctioned Rs 4,200 crore for upgradation of information technology infrastructure of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) for processing returns, refunds, faceless scrutiny and verification.
The Child Protection Services programme under the Integrated Child Development Services was increased to Rs 1,500 crore from Rs 925 crore.
With Deputy Governor Viral Acharya and another member Chetan Ghate voting for a status quo, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das and three others outvoted them for reduction in repo rate to 6.25 per cent from the existing 6.50 per cent.
Railway Budget will be presented on July 8.
Under the Budget being presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the Plan expenditure for both the Centre and the states will go up by Rs 61,000 crore (Rs 610 billion) over the Interim Budget.
Vice Chairman Harivansh regretted that 78 hours of business were lost due to disruptions and that the House functioned for only 27 hours.
Survey likely to be tabled in July by the new government.
Rediff.com's Shailajanand Mishra discovers that the Sensex has fallen 12 times on the 20 Budget Days since this century began.
Within the next two years, verification and scrutiny of returns will happen electronically through anonymised back offices manned by tax experts and officials. It will function without any personal interface between taxpayers and tax officers. Both the taxpayer and the tax officer will not know each other -- who is scrutinising whose return, and at which place, points out Kuldip Kumar, partner and leader personal tax, PwC.
'Are all roads in India privatised? Are governments not playing a role in airports or ports? If they (private players) want to set up lines for a specific requirement, I see no reason to object. It will expand the opportunity and passengers will also benefit.'
The tax collections are down by Rs 60,000 crore (Rs 600 billion) over budget estimates for 2008-09, Pranab Mukherjee said.
As the extended Winter Session of Parliament entered its third and last week on Monday, the Telangana issue continued to disrupt Rajya Sabha leading to its adjournment for the day.
The government's dependence on debt has come down from 27 paise in the previous Budget to 25 paise in the coming year, reflecting ease of pressure on revenue collections.
After presenting his first railway budget, Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday said he was not for populism but wanted to be "realistic" to ensure that the national transporter thrives for the people of the country.
Governments make budgets to retain and consolidate their hold on power, not to please opponents or economists. They do so by trying to gratify as many as possible without causing harm to the others, says Shreekant Sambrani.
Jaitley is now a minister without portfolio in the Narendra Modi government.
Around 40 per cent of the country is staring at drought-like conditions ahead of the monsoon as water levels have receded sharply.
The term of the Deputy Chairman and Members of the Commission is coterminous with that of the Prime Minister and all of them have resigned following the change of government last month after the general elections.
The turnover of public sector companies has increased from Rs 587,000 crore (Rs 5870 billion) in 2003-04 to Rs 10,87,000 crore (Rs 10870 billion) in 2007-08, Pranab Mukherjee said.
This time, five states, including Tamil Nadu, have requested the Centre to delay the pay hikes.
Currently, the enforcement officers are making seizures of assets directly and indirectly connected to offenders, including jewelers Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi in the Punjab National Bank fraud and Vijay Mallya in the Rs 9,000-crore IDBI loan case.
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