New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today presented the General Budget for the financial year 2017-18 giving sops to middle class, tax benefits to industries and higher budgetary allocation for Agriculture and Rural Areas. In the budget proposals Finance Minister announced Income Tax relief to those who earn up to Rs 5-lakh per annum as they will have to pay only five percent tax on the income between 2.5-lakh to Rs 5-lakh. In effective terms there will be no tax up to Rs 4.5-lakh if they avail the exemptions mentioned under various categories. The tax earlier was 10 percent.
The minister imposed a surcharge of 10 percent for those whose annual income is Rs 50-lakh to Rs 1-crore. The 15 percent surcharge on incomes above Rs 1-crore will continue. To curb the black money coming to the Political Parties through cash, Finance Minister Jaitley announced that only Rs 2000 can be given in cash to a political party in cash. Any amount above this will have to be donated through cheque or digital mode. Earlier, Political Parties were allowed to get donations of up to Rs 20000 in cash.
Political parties have to keep the records of all the donation will have to file the return on time. For Political funding, Mr Jaitley mooted the proposal of Electoral Bonds to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in due course. Encouraged by the Agricultural sector growth rate of 4.1 this year, he said that this sector is expected to grow at 4.6 percent. Total allocation for rural, agricultural and allied sectors for 2017-18 is Rs 187223-crore, which is 24 percent higher than last year.
Finance Minister proposed a total outlay of Rs 21.47-lakh-crore to give a major push to agriculture and rural areas development. The Budget has made a total allocation of over Rs 1.87-lakh-crore for rural, agri and allied sectors, and highest ever allocation has been for MGNREGA, up from Rs 37,000-crore in 2016-17 to Rs 48,000-crore in 2017-18. A dedicated micro-irrigation fund will be set up by NABARD to achieve the mission of ‘per drop more crop’. The corpus of long-term irrigation fund in NABARD will now become Rs 40,000-crore Mr Jaitley said the Mission ‘Antodaya’ will bring one crore households out of poverty. (UNI)