Interim Budget 2024

03.02.2024

Interim Budget 2024 , Daily Current Affairs, RACE IAS : Best IAS Coaching in Lucknow 

   Why in the news?

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget for the next financial year (2024-25).

Key Point

• It was her sixth budget presentation, but was different from all the others because this was an interim budget.

Key Highlights of the 2024-25 Interim Budget:

• While presenting the Interim Budget, Union Finance Minister Smt Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the capital expenditure outlay for the next year is being increased by 11.1 per cent to Rs ~11 lakh crore, which would be 3.4 percent of the GDP.
• The Interim Budget contains a number of announcements and strategies indicating directions and development approach for making India Viksit Bharat by 2047.
• Making a slew of announcements, Smt Nirmala Sitharaman said, the Government will pay utmost attention to make the eastern region and its people a powerful driver of India’s growth.

Key Highlights of the Budget Include:

For Tech Sector:

• A corpus of Rs1 lakh crore will be established with a fifty-year interest free loan.
• The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates.
• This will also encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains.

For Railways:

• Three major economic railway corridor programmes will be implemented-energy, mineral and cement corridors, port connectivity corridors, and high traffic density corridors.
• Moreover, forty thousand normal rail bogies will be converted to the Vande Bharat standards to enhance safety, convenience and comfort of passengers.

Aviation Sector:

• The number of airports has doubled to 149 and today five hundred and seventeen new routes are carrying 1.3 crore passengers.
• Indian carriers have proactively placed orders for over 1000 new aircrafts.

Allocation for MGNREGA:

• The Government has announced to provide Rs 86,000 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme in the Interim Budget for 2024-25.
• The amount was Rs 60,000 crore for 2023-24.

Subsidy on Food, Fertilizer & Fuel:

• As per the interim budget, the subsidy bill on the ‘3 Fs’ — food, fertilizer and fuel — is slated to fall to a five-year-low of Rs ~3.8 lakh crore in 2024-25.
• The fertilizer subsidy has been decreased with hopes of improvement in the situation in Ukraine & increased domestic production.

Changes with respect to Demographics:

• Smt Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the Government will form a high-powered committee for an extensive consideration of the challenges arising from fast population growth and demographic changes.
• The committee will be mandated to make recommendations for addressing these challenges comprehensively in relation to the goal of ‘Viksit Bharat’.

                                                                 Source:The Hindu