India on Tuesday unveiled a growth-oriented budget aimed at boosting infrastructure like highways, cargo terminals and airports, and proffering its credit guarantee scheme to small firms to help them tide over the Covid-induced losses.
In her budget speech in Parliament, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the budget for the next fiscal -- from April 2022 to March 2023 -- had been raised to US$540 billion (40 trillion Indian rupees) from US$477 billion in the ongoing financial year, reports UNB.
"The economy has shown resilience to come out of the pandemic. We need to sustain the level of growth. The new infrastructure investments are part of the government's economic blueprint for the next 25 years," Sitharaman said.
The new infrastructure investments included a masterplan for some expressways (a high-speed corridor on a state or national highway), 25,000km of new highways, 100 new cargo terminals and some new greenfield airports.
On the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) for small businesses, the Finance Minister said that it would be extended for one more year, up to March 2023.
"The allocation for the scheme aimed at providing credit to micro, small and medium-sized businesses, or MSMEs, will be expanded by Rs 500 billion to Rs 5.0 trillion," she said, adding that the extra amount would be earmarked for sectors such as hospitality.
In another big announcement, the Finance Minister said that the country's central bank would soon issue a new digital currency, powered by blockchain technology. At the same time, she proposed a 30% tax on any income from digital or virtual assets.
"A currency is a currency if it is issued by the central bank. Anything outside is not a currency. Everything that exists outside the central bank's ambit is an asset and we are taxing it at 30 per cent," she said.
In July 2021, the Reserve Bank of India said it was working towards its own digital currency. "The Central Bank Digital Currency will be the same as a fiat currency and exchangeable one-to-one with the fiat currency," the bank's deputy governor T Rabi Sankar had said.
Moreover, in a first, the Finance Minister announced a plan to set up a National Tele-Mental Health programme in India under which 23 tele-mental health centres would be launched to address mental health issues plaguing many during the pandemic.
"To better the access to quality mental health counselling and care services, a National-Tele Mental Health programme will be launched. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) Bengaluru, will provide tech support for the mental health programme,'' she said.
However, no changes were announced in personal income tax rates this year. The government also did not announce any additional taxes on the country's wealthy, which brought cheers to the country's bourses.
Post-budget presentation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his televised address, described it as "people-friendly and progressive". "The budget has brought new hopes and opportunities for the common people," he said, congratulating his Finance Minister.
India's main opposition Congress party, however, slammed the government, saying there was nothing in the budget for the middle classes, youth, farmers or women. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter to say that it was a "zero sum budget".