Budget Highlights 2010
The finance minister on Monday outlined plans to speed infrastructure development and unveiled increased spending for farmers and the poor in the first budget since the Congress-led government was re-elected convincingly in May. Following are the highlights from the budget speech: "The first challenge is to return the GDP growth rate of 9 percent per annum at the earliest." "The second challenge is to deepen and broaden the agenda for inclusive development." "There are signs of revival in domestic industry and foreign investors have also returned to Indian markets in the last couple of months." "It is possible that the two worst quarters since the global financial meltdown in September 2008 are behind us." "While the global financial condition has shown improvement over the recent month, uncertainty relating to the revival of the global economy remains. We cannot, therefore, afford to drop our guard. "We have to continue our efforts to provide further stimulus to the economy." 2008/09 GDP growth seen at 6.7 pct To return to fiscal responsibility targets "at the earliest" Plans institutional reforms to control fiscal deficit "It is important to recognise that almost three quarters of our oil consumption makes through imports. Domestic prices of petrol and diesel have to be brought in sync with the global prices of these items." "Governnment will set up an expert group to advise for a viable and sustainable system of pricing petroleum products.
"The public sector undertakings are the wealth of the nation and part of this wealth should rest in the hands of the people." "While retaining at least 51 percent government equity in our enterprises, I propose to encourage a people's participation in our disinvestment programme." "Here I must state clearly that public sector enterprises such as banks and insurance companies will remain in the public sector and will be given all support including capital infusion to grow and remain competitive." To create an environment for private investment To raise in a phased manner the limit for non-founder holdings in all companies To ensure more flexibility to India Infrastructure Finance Co Ltd Have asked states to remove bottlenecks on infrastructure projects Allocates 5 bln rupees ($104 million) for Mumbai flood project Liquefied natural gas infrastructure to be expanded To raise allocation for National Highways development by 23 percent To raise allocation for urban poor schemes to 39.73 billion rupees in 2009/10 Targeting agriculture credit of 3.25 trillion rupees To pay additional interest subvention of 1 percent to farmers who pay short-term farm loans on schedule To provide additional 10 billion rupees over interim budget for irrigation To extend agriculture debt waiver by 6 months Plans to move towards nutrient-based subsidy regime for fertilisers To offer direct subsidy to farmers To extend interest subvention to exporters in 7 sectors till March 2010 To give relief to exporters hit by global financial crisis
To allocate 40 billion rupees to encourage lending to small firms To set aside 1 billion rupees for banking services in unbanked areas To allocate of 391 billion rupees for rural jobs programme in 2009/10 , 144 percent more than in 2008/09 To raise allocation for rural roads scheme by 59 pct in 2009/10 To raise allocation to Bharat Nirman infrastructure programme by 45 percent To allocate 70 billion rupees for rural electrification scheme To allocate 20 billion rupees for rural housing under National Housing Bank To set up 2 handloom clusters, 1 power loom cluster
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