NEWDELHI: The Centre will go in for a massive spending spree on infrastructure creation, healthcare, education and demand generation to revive India’s pandemic-battered economy.
In her third budget presentation in the Parliament on Monday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to unleash massive fiscal expansion in 2021-22 on the back of high borrowings, fire sales and an agricultural cess.
However, no adverse impact is set to come on prices as the Centre made prior duty adjustments before imposing the cess. The first budget after the Covid-19 outbreak got a thumbs-up from India Inc with the equity markets jumping around 5 per cent in the day’s trade.
The biggest take-away from the budget has been the Centre’s aggressive push to revive the economy via higher outlay for capital expenditure. The FM proposed to increase capex by 34 per cent in Budget 2021-22 in comparison to the previous fiscal BE (Budget Estimate). In her Budget speech that lasted for around 1 hour and 45 minutes, Sitharaman doled out enormous amounts for railways, roadways, healthcare, education as well as the agriculture sector.
Capex alone has been proposed to be increased to Rs 5.54 lakh crore from Rs 4.12 lakh crore spending target in BE FY21. Also, she proposed to institute a ‘Land Bank’ monetisation company along with an asset management and reconstruction company or a ‘Bad Bank’ and a Development Financial Institution (DFI) which will fund infra projects.
Besides, the Finance Minister proposed to relax certain conditions which prohibited private funding, restriction on commercial activities, and direct investment in infrastructure to attract foreign sovereign wealth and pension funds to invest in domestic infra projects. She laid out a new import structure along with proposals for a conducive environment to usher in investments into Fintech, insurance and start-ups.
Further, Sitharaman proposed to give relief to those Non-Resident Indians who have returned to Indiabut face hardship of double taxation.
The minister set aside Rs 20,000 crore for public sector bank re-capitalisation and gave a push to digital payments and research in Artificial Intelligence.AGENCIES
In her third budget presentation in the Parliament on Monday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to unleash massive fiscal expansion in 2021-22 on the back of high borrowings, fire sales and an agricultural cess.
However, no adverse impact is set to come on prices as the Centre made prior duty adjustments before imposing the cess. The first budget after the Covid-19 outbreak got a thumbs-up from India Inc with the equity markets jumping around 5 per cent in the day’s trade.
The biggest take-away from the budget has been the Centre’s aggressive push to revive the economy via higher outlay for capital expenditure. The FM proposed to increase capex by 34 per cent in Budget 2021-22 in comparison to the previous fiscal BE (Budget Estimate). In her Budget speech that lasted for around 1 hour and 45 minutes, Sitharaman doled out enormous amounts for railways, roadways, healthcare, education as well as the agriculture sector.
Capex alone has been proposed to be increased to Rs 5.54 lakh crore from Rs 4.12 lakh crore spending target in BE FY21. Also, she proposed to institute a ‘Land Bank’ monetisation company along with an asset management and reconstruction company or a ‘Bad Bank’ and a Development Financial Institution (DFI) which will fund infra projects.
Besides, the Finance Minister proposed to relax certain conditions which prohibited private funding, restriction on commercial activities, and direct investment in infrastructure to attract foreign sovereign wealth and pension funds to invest in domestic infra projects. She laid out a new import structure along with proposals for a conducive environment to usher in investments into Fintech, insurance and start-ups.
Further, Sitharaman proposed to give relief to those Non-Resident Indians who have returned to Indiabut face hardship of double taxation.
The minister set aside Rs 20,000 crore for public sector bank re-capitalisation and gave a push to digital payments and research in Artificial Intelligence.AGENCIES
