Professional Documents
Culture Documents
KEY$FEATURES$OF$BUDGET$
This article focusses on the General Budget 2015-16.
9 PILLARS OF THE BUDGET
The FMs nine pillars will focus on Agriculture, Rural sector, Social sector, Education, Infrastructural
reforms, Boosting financial sector, Focusing on ease of doing business, Fiscal management to take care of
governments finances and Tax reforms to reduce compliance burden.
BASIS OF THE BUDGET
INTRODUCTION
!
!
!
Foreign exchange reserves touched highest ever level of about 350 billion US
dollars.
CHALLENGES
IN 2016-17
!
!
ROADMAP &
PRIORITIES
!
!
!
SECTOR SPECIFIC
AGRICULTURE
AND FARMERS
WELFARE
!
!
!
RURAL SECTOR
Soil Health Card scheme will cover all 14 crore farm holdings by March
2017.
2,000 model retail outlets of Fertilizer companies will be provided with soil
and seed testing facilities during the next three years.
Four dairying projects - Pashudhan Sanjivani, Nakul Swasthya Patra, EPashudhan Haat and National Genomic Centre for indigenous breeds.
2.87 lakh crore will be given as Grant in Aid to Gram Panchayats and
Municipalities as per the recommendations of the 14th Finance
Commission.
Every block under drought and rural distress will be taken up as an
intensive Block under the Deen Dayal Antyodaya Mission.
300 Rurban Clusters will be developed under the Shyama Prasad
Mukherjee Rurban Mission.
!
!
!
!
SOCIAL SECTOR
INCLUDING
HEALTH CARE
A new Digital Literacy Mission Scheme for rural India to cover around 6
crore additional household within the next 3 years.
!
!
2,000 crore allocated for initial cost of providing LPG connections to BPL
families.
New health protection scheme will provide health cover up to One lakh per
family. For senior citizens an additional top-up package up to 30,000 will be
provided.
3,000 Stores under Prime Ministers Jan Aushadhi Yojana will be opened
during 2016-17.
!
!
EDUCATION,
SKILLS AND JOB
CREATION
!
!
!
SKILL
DEVELOPMENT
JOB CREATION
!
!
GoI will pay contribution of 8.33% for of all new employees enrolling in
EPFO for the first three years of their employment.
!
INFRASTRUCTU
RE AND
INVESTMENT
FINANCIAL
SECTOR
REFORMS
GOVERNANCE
AND EASE OF
DOING
BUSINESS
!
!
!
!
Bill for Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and
Services by using the Aadhar framework to be introduced.
!
!
FISCAL
DISCIPLINE
Price Stabilisation Fund with a corpus of 900 crore to help maintain stable
prices of Pulses.
!
!
!
!
PROVIDING
CERTAINITY IN
!
!
!
SIMPLIFICATION
AND
RATIONALIZATI
ON OF TAXES
represented in the form of any asset by paying tax at 30%, and surcharge at
7.5% and penalty at 7.5%, which is a total of 45% of the undisclosed
income. Declarants will have immunity from prosecution.
Surcharge levied at 7.5% of undisclosed income will be called Krishi
Kalyan surcharge to be used for agriculture and rural economy.
New Dispute Resolution Scheme to be introduced. No penalty in respect of
cases with disputed tax up to 10 lakh.
High Level Committee chaired by Revenue Secretary to oversee fresh cases
where assessing officer applies the retrospective amendment.
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
!
!
Looking to leave its political imprint over spending in rural India, the National Democratic
Alliance (NDA) government has budgeted for a massive 31 per cent hike in its share of
spending on nine big-ticket centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) in 2016-17 over last year's
budgetary allocation.
Last year's Budget mantra of 'cooperative federalism' has been sidestepped to favour political
exigencies.
To fund these schemes, the Centre has introduced new cesses and surcharges on top of existing
ones.
Revenue from these sources remains in the central kitty and will not have to be shared with
states.
Surprisingly, despite the Opposition's repeated attempts to paint it as being anti-poor, the NDA
government has not claimed too much political dividend out of the fact that it actually spent
more on most of these centrally sponsored schemes in 2015-16 as compared to its original
budgetary allocations.
The mid-course correction in the shape of hike in spending came as an afterthought. It suggests
that the government hit by the 'suit-boot' jibes of the Congress and aware of growing distress in
rural areas, routed the additional tax revenue it garnered to prop up the rural economy.
The renewed faith in CSS this year is in sharp contrast to last year's Budget rhetoric.
!
!
!
!
After accepting the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, which proposed to
increase the states share in the divisible pool from 32 per cent to 42 per cent, the NDA
government had cut back on several of these schemes last year.
The sharp increase in untied funds was matched by an almost commensurate cut in central
funding to central schemes.
In this year they backed to all CSS and increased the financial allocation including MGNREGA.
As the Indian economy is facing agrarian distress, the Budget was a tough balancing act
between fiscal consolidation and much-needed spending to revive economic growth.
To bridge the gap, the Government is revisiting the roadmap, especially in the rural areas, which
was documented in the first Budget.
The roadmap includes rural electrification of all villages by March 2018, road network
connecting each village by 2019 and doubling of farmers income by 2020, besides maximum
irrigation facilities to farmers and digital literacy as well.
!
!
After the success of DBT in LPG, a pilot project for DBT in fertilisers has been announced.
The proposal to further target LPG connections to 5 crore poor households in 3 years will
ensure universal coverage of cooking gas, reduce pollution, improve health, reduce
deforestation and create employment.
!
!
The announcement of 10 public and 10 private institutions to emerge as world class teaching and
research institutions is a tremendous move.
It is now up to public spirited individuals to set up world class universities in the tradition of an
ancient Takshila or a modern Yale. Full autonomy is the key to the success of such institutions.
The National Land Record Modernisation Programme starts today under the Digital India
Initiative. Modernised land records through de-materialisation and leveraging JAM will bring
prosperity to villages, while reducing litigation and conflict. It is the first step in mobilising land
for housing and inclusive development in cities.
FISCAL PRUDENCE: The master stroke of this Budget is Mr Jaitley's decision to adhere to the
fiscal deficit targets of 3.9 per cent of gross domestic product in a year that he had himself
announced last year. It was a master stroke because by sticking to these numbers Mr Jaitley
addressed the concerns of the most vocal and influential sections of the economy - the
economists, the market analysts, the rating agencies, the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, Indian business leaders and of course the Reserve Bank of India.
CONSERVATIVE TAX REVENUE NUMBERS: This is the second big takeaway from the
Budget. The current year has seen nominal growth of 8.6 per cent and yet tax revenue growth is
at around 17 per cent. Barring unforeseen developments, achieving 11.7 per cent tax revenue
growth next year should not be a big task particularly if the projection of nominal growth of 11
per cent is realised.
MISSES
ON BANKING REFORMS
!
!
They have the burden of implementing unprofitable social goals and are encountering
technological disruption which is bewildering even to the best banks.
Getting them out of government ownership is the only viable option and this was the last chance
to say so.
ON GST
!
Rather than spinning wheels on the GST Bill, can we not focus on getting many of the benefits
of GST that are possible through executive decision?
For example, the excise and service tax arms of the CBEC in the finance ministry can be merged
immediately to align the two taxes.
The GSTN company is in place and it can offer a state of the art VAT system with automated
invoice matching to all states. At least 15-20 states will come on board.
!
!
The design can be made future proof for the switch to GST.
A common gateway for payment of both central and state taxes can be provided by GSTN
immediately.
This budget also missed the opportunity to bring a majority of Indians into the formal sector as
legitimate participants.
This requires adherence to two principles - ensuring that the benefit of entry into the formal
sector outweighs the cost, and that compliance is simple while evasion is difficult.
Building on JAM is the opportunity to use what iSPIRT calls the 'India Stack', a set of electronic
services that enable paperless, presence-less and cashless transactions.
Perhaps the most important miss is that the budget completely does not get this coming 'great
disruption'. It is going to come at speed and scale and threaten many industries and institutions.
It can also be used as state policy. The Chinese get this. At the January 2015 launch of Webank,
China's first online bank set up by the internet giant Tencent, Prime Minister Li Keqiang said,
"We will lower costs for and deliver practical benefits to small clients, while forcing traditional
financial institutions to accelerate reforms."
The brilliant Economic Survey talks about the chakravyuha challenge. Even as the government grapples
with it, leveraging disruptive technology is a great option!
BY NO MEANS A SOCIALIST BUDGET
!
Finance Minister Arun Jaitleys emphasis on doubling farm incomes, rural development, and
allocations for a battery of impressively named schemes for the social sector may give the
impression that the right-wing NDA government has suddenly taken a socialist turn. The
reality, however, is otherwise.
Howsoever one defines it, an essential feature of socialist policy making is increasing government
expenditure. But Union Budget 2016 marks a new low for government expenditure as a
percentage of GDP.
As N.C. Saxena, former National Advisory Council member, says, Declining government
spending has been a trend that began in UPA II and continued into the NDA years. From a
high of 15.9 per cent of the GDP in 2009-10, government spending was down to 13.3 per cent last
Also, far from any radical hikes in social spends that a socialist tag would suggest, 2016
budget is a holding operation that seeks to reap electoral dividends by passing itself off as
socialist. The recently published Economic Survey 2015-16 had clearly spelt out the importance
of increasing investments in health and education for reaping the demographic dividend. This
piece of advice, however, has gone unheeded in this Budget.
Increased spending on agriculture and rural development besides increasing agricultural output
may push up rural demand for manufactured goods.
There is also the hope that after two years of drought, the monsoon will be good in the coming
fiscal.
The additional spending on infrastructure may draw in private investment. Apart from these,
there are no direct measures to stimulate private investment.
There are references to new pieces of legislation relating to Aadhar, dispute resolution in publicprivate-partnership projects and modifying the Motor Vehicles Act.
Important pieces of legislation such as the Goods and Services Tax Bill and Insolvency and
Bankruptcy Code are already caught in the political logjam.
Under the circumstances, the government must move strongly in the area of administrative
reforms so that cumbersome procedures are eliminated and the administrative machinery,
including the delivery system, functions more efficiently.
These are low-hanging fruits which can be plucked. The ease of doing business is influenced by
how well the government functions.
The decision to stick to the path of fiscal consolidation is a wise one. It will send out the right signals to
the investors. The impact of high public spending will depend upon the drive and efficiency with which
the new projects and programmes are taken up and executed. Implementation is the key to boosting
investor confidence.
QUESTION on Budget
1.! A critical component of minimum Government and maximum governance is to
ensure targeted disbursement of Government subsidies and financial assistance to the
actual beneficiaries. Public money should reach the poor and the deserving without
any leakage. Discuss the statement in the light of steps taken by the government in
budget 2016-17.
$