Why in the News?

• The Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Smt Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Interim Union Budget for 2024-2025 in Parliament on 1st Feb 2024 

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Key Highlights of the 2024-25 Interim Budget

Key Highlights of the 2024-25 Interim Budget:

• While presenting the Interim Budget, Union Finance Minister Smt Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the capital expenditure outlay for the next year is being increased by 11.1 per cent to Rs ~11 lakh crore, which would be 3.4 per cent of the GDP.
• The Interim Budget contains a number of announcements and strategies indicating directions and development approach for making India Viksit Bharat by 2047.
• Making a slew of announcements, Smt Nirmala Sitharaman said, the Government will pay utmost attention to make the eastern region and its people a powerful driver of India’s growth.
• Key Highlights of the Budget Include:
• For Tech Sector:
  • A corpus of Rs1 lakh crore will be established with fifty-year interest free loan.
  • The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates.
  • This will also encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains.
• For Railways:
  • Three major economic railway corridor programmes will be implemented-energy, mineral and cement corridors, port connectivity corridors, and high traffic density corridors.
  • Moreover, forty thousand normal rail bogies will be converted to the Vande Bharat standards to enhance safety, convenience and comfort of passengers.
• Aviation Sector:
  • The number of airports has doubled to 149 and today five hundred and seventeen new routes are carrying 1.3 crore passengers.
  • Indian carriers have pro-actively placed orders for over 1000 new aircrafts.
• Allocation for MGNREGS:
  • The Government has announced to provide Rs 86,000 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme in the Interim Budget for 2024-25.
  • The amount was Rs 60,000 crore for 2023-24.
• Subsidy on Food, Fertilizer & Fuel:
  • As per the interim budget, the subsidy bill on the ‘3 Fs’ — food, fertilizer and fuel — is slated to fall to a five-year-low of Rs ~3.8 lakh crore in 2024-25.
  • The fertilizer subsidy has been decreased with hopes on improvement in situation in Ukraine & increased domestic production.
• Changes w.r.t. Demographics:
  • Smt Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the Government will form a high-powered committee for an extensive consideration of the challenges arising from fast population growth and demographic changes.
  • The committee will be mandated to make recommendations for addressing these challenges comprehensively in relation to the goal of ‘Viksit Bharat’.