How will the Union budget help lay a $5 Trillion economy?
The Budget stressed on increasing the capital expenditure for infrastructure and also focuses on improving the consumption and investment towards building new resources.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman added –
“I think we have laid the foundation for increasing the consumption, ensuring the capital expenditure and government investments will go in spending on the building of assets in infrastructure, having cascading effects in both the short term and long term.”
The Majority of the government investment is directed towards infrastructure through various aspects of health and agriculture, triggering vitreous cycle for the economy to grow.
The finance minister added that the rationalization of rates of Goods and Service Tax is reviewed every three months by the GST council of India. The rationalization of GST rates would help the government and businesses. To prevent fraudulent activities, the indirect tax administration is now getting the benefits of data analytics for better security.
GST has been revenue-neutral, with a collection of around one crore last month, where the compensation rate was fixed at 14 percent on the premise that the economy would grow 12-13 percent. However, the collections have fallen short and would be causing an impact.
On liquidity to industry and NBFCs, Nirmala said that every possible step was taken to ensure that the availability of cash does not become an issue. The government is monitoring lending by both public and private sector banks. Secretaries are continuously engaged with banks where every possible step is being taken for the availability of the liquidity.
Sitharaman also dismissed the fear of optional tax structure as announced in the Budget, which would decrease savings.
Regarding the partial disinvestment in the LIC through an IPO, Nirmala added that “Indian people will hold shares, and there is no such reason to believe as to why money in the insurance company will not be secure.
