India on Thursday announced a sweeping plan to give half a billion poor Indians free access to health care, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to address rising demands for greater economic and social protections before national elections next year.
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Minister announced to develop and upgrade existing 22,000 rural haats into Gramin Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) to take care of the interests of more than 86% small and marginal farmers. “The target group is 10 crore families”.
The Centre will bear 60 per cent of the expenditure, the rest will be borne by the respective states, said Mr Kant, adding that the premium per family would work out to be Rs 1,100.
Concurring with him Panasonic India and South Asia President and CEO Manish Sharma said, “increasing customs duty on imported products and components to boost local manufacturing is consistent with the government’s Make-in-India initiative”. “The Rashtriya Swasthya Bhima Yojana (current insurance scheme that is being run in several states) has succeeded in states such as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu”. Rs. 1.48 lakh crore will be allocated for railways in the next fiscal. “The Finance Minister should be complimented for showing courage to include most of the sectors in a scheme that involves hiring employees with the fixed contractual tenure”, he said.
The decision to convert the Primary Health Centres into wellness centres was taken in last fiscal’s Budget (2017-18). The RSBY would be subsumed under the NHPS, once the new scheme is launched, she said.
On rural India, Jaitley said that the government has connected rural areas to roads and provided toilets inside the houses under the Swachh Bharat.
There, however, it has been good news for the people where health is concerned, with the proposal of a National health protection scheme for poor vulnerable families.
“The Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Committee (BACC) of IAMAI is happy that the finance minister has recognised the importance and popularity of cryptocurrency and has chosen to talk about it on budget day”. “In the year 2018-19, for creation of livelihood and infrastructure in rural areas, total amount to be spent by the Ministries will be Rs14.34 lakh crore, including extra-budgetary and non-budgetary resources of Rs11.98 lakh crore”. The government will contribute 12 percent of the new workers in the EPF account for three years.
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Citing various major announcements the past, he said, when the government came in, the exemption limit was raised from Rs 2 lakh, additional exemption of Rs 50,000 on saving so Rs 1 lakh became Rs 1.5 lakh and another exemption Rs 50,000 for housing loan repayments raising it to Rs 2 lakh per year. These GrAMs, electronically linked to e-NAM and exempted from regulations of APMCs, will provide farmers facility to make direct sale to consumers and bulk purchasers.
