“The health and wellness centre scheme is the silver lining in this budget and will be a major reform.Proposal to establish 24 medical colleges is another welcome move, ” said Manda Chiranjeevi Das, Management Consultant of Ramesh Hospitals in Vijayawada. This is for projects such as the building of roads and millions of homes for the poor, and the conversion of 22,000 rural markets to allow farmers to sell their produce directly to consumers.
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Although the key focus of this year’s Union Budget has been agriculture with the announcement of a number of schemes and measures that are expected to benefit the sector, it has not been appreciated by many.
Economists were in agreement that the Budget should help foster economic growth.
With chaotic implementation of the Goods and Services Tax and demonetization causing distress in the economy, Jaitley announced massive spending on rural and urban infrastructure as also lower tax rates for small and medium enterprises. “Not only does this help in job creation but also advances the nation in competitive global space”.
He later told state-run Doordarshan Television that the largesse had nothing to do with winning votes for Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The middle class is anyway supportive of the government. The federal government’s entire healthcare budget for next year is only $8bn which will surely not suffice to cover the costs of the world’s largest health insurance program.
Stocks have been more resilient, gaining 4.9 percent this year and hitting records amid signs earnings are recovering after years of poor performance. “But it will become part of the campaign rhetoric in the coming months”. We are moving fast towards optimal electrification of railway network.
If implemented with reasonable success, the proposed mega health insurance scheme will mark a huge stride towards creating a social security net for the underprivileged in a country where healthcare is scarce and costly. While the budget estimate of fiscal deficit for 2017-18 was 3.2% of the GDP, the revised estimate is now 3.5% of the GDP, the same as 2016-17. But India’s agricultural workforce is largely unskilled or semi-skilled.
Declaring that the ceiling had been raised to go with the new definition of SMEs, he said it would benefit the entire class of micro, small and medium enterprises which accounts for nearly 99 per cent of the companies filing their tax returns. It remains to be seen how effective these measures will be in improving farm incomes and its attendant inflationary impact.
Airports could be yet another big area, particularly with the present government able to identify infrastructure bottlenecks.
Young job-seekers, however, can take heart from the promise that the government will pay 12% of their wages into their provident fund for the first three years, thus incentivising employers to hire them.
“This is actually an election Budget”. A lot of gullible taxpayers’ eyes were peeled onto the TV screens or mobile phones as the minister covered the provisions of the Budget for various categories.
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