Finance Budget 2018 for India (live)

Budget 2018: Finance minister Arun Jaitley will present the Union Budget for the year 2018 in the Parliament. As it is expected, this budget will largely be limited to appeasing people in preparations for the upcoming General Elections in 2019. This is the last full budget for the BJP government, and hence their last full chance to impress the aam-aadmi in an attempt to woe the vote bank.

Here are the five core areas that will make or break this budget for the population at large.

Personal Income Tax rate reductions or increase in tax saving slabs, change in taxes for capital gains (share trading)
National wide Farmer loan waivers or deductions and focus on agriculture produce sale prices
Fiscal deficit breaching its decline
Infrastructure investments to boost jobs
Revised GST Rates for products and services, petroleum products coming under the ambit of GST

The Budget starts at 11.00 AM and we will keep you posted.

Union Budget 2018 - India's finance

MSP for Kharif crops will be 1.5x cost of production. If lower than MSP, government has to ensure farmers receive necessary MSP.

Government proposes to launch Operation Green for which a sum of Rs 500 crore will be allocated.

Corpus of Rs 2,000 cr proposed to set up an agricultural market fund, to uplift the agriculture sector in the country.

Government proposes to launch Operation Green for which a sum of Rs 500 crore will be allocated.

FM proposes to extend kisan credit card to fisheries & animal husbandry farmers and allocate Rs 10,000 cr for fisheries & aquaculture, animal husbandry funds.

Swachh Bharat Mission has helped create 6 crore toilet facilities so far. In the next 2 years, 2 crore more toilets will be added for defecation free country

Rs 14.34 lakh crore to be spent for providing livelihood to rural India through infrastructure building

Improvement in quality of teachers can improve quality of education.The government proposes to treat education holistically without segmentation

The government will extend a favourable tax arrangement for farmer organisations. The details will be provided later

In order to tackle the pollution due to burning of crop residue, the subsidy is being removed. The govt. will work to subsidize the cost of machinery to be procured for combating rising air pollution.

Proposed to launch a flagship National Health Protection Scheme initiative with nearly 50 crore beneficiaries which will provide up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year,for hospitalisation, one of the largest such benefits program anywhere in the world

Government will introduce 24 new medical colleges including upgrading certain existing colleges. This will ensure there is 1 government medical college in every state of the country.

We are allocating Rs 1 Lakh crore in the next four years to boost Research and Development. We are also coming up with a specialised railway university at Vadodara.

By 2022, every block with more than 50% ST population and at least 20,000 tribal people will have 'Ekalavya' school at par with Navodaya Vidyalas

Mass formalization of MSME sector is happening after demonetisation and GST. Rs 3,794 crore is was set aside for MSME last year for mass formalisation. The government will soon announce measures to address non-performing assets of MSMEs.

The government will fund 12% of wages for new employees of Employees' Provident Fund in all sectors. Take home salary of new women employees to go up in the formal sector. Only 8% PF to be cut in first three years. There is no change in EPF.

Integrated BEd program to start soon, with teachers training as the main focus. Rs 1 lakh crore to be invested over the next 4 years for a new drive to boost Research and Development.

We propose to expand capacity by five times at airports under AAI. 1 Billion trips each year. UDAN will connect 56 unserved airports and 36 unserved heliports. We are ensuring that even those citizens who wear hawaii chappal can fly in a hawai jahaj.

The allocation of Digital India has been doubled and the government proposes to set up 5 lakh WiFi hotspots. The government does not consider cryptocurrency as legal tender and will work towards eliminating illicit transactions going on through crypto assets

35,000 km will be completed under Bharatmala project with outlay of Rs 5.35 lakh cr before moving on to the initiatives in Railways.

Cash payment at toll plaza no more. The government will introduce a toll system based on pay-as-you-use module. We will also bring out an industry-friendly defence production policy. Two industrial defence industrial development corridors to be constructed.

Aadhaar has provided identity to Indians. The government will involve a scheme to assign every enterprise a unique ID just like Aadhaar. The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management will come up with debt Exchange Traded Fund.

Government insurance companies to be merged into a single entity, and subsequently listed in the stock exchange, as part of the disinvestment programme. Rs 80,000 crore disinvestment target for 2018-19, target for 2017-18 has been exceeded and will reach Rs 1 lakh crore

The salaries of President (Rs. 5 lakh), Vice President (Rs. 4.5 lakh) and Governors (3.5 lakh) will be increased. Salaries of MP’s will also be raised. A new law will be introduced that will automatically revise MPs' emoluments every five years, indexed to inflation.

Revised fiscal deficit estimate for 2017-18 is 3.5% of GDP, fiscal deficit of 3.3% expected for 2018-19. GST revenue for only 11 months is 21.5 lakh crore. Tax buoyancy for 2017-18 is at 2.11%. Number of tax payers has increased from 6.47 lakh crores to 8.27 lakh crores

No tax relief for individuals, apart from additional Rs. 40,000 benefit in terms of medical and other expenses. #fail

Relief on tax for senior citizens from income coming from bank interest increased from 10,000 to 30,000. Fixed Deposit/Post office interest to be exempt till Rs 50,000 80D benefit enhanced to Rs 50,000.