Finance MInister Arun Jaitley Presents Union Budget 2015-2016

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today presented the Union Budget of India for the year 2015-2016; this happens to be the first full-fledged budget of Modi government. From the outset, this seems to be a business-friendly budget, aimed at attracting greater investment for Indian economy.

The finance minister announced an unprecedented corporate tax-cut. The tax has been slashed down from 30% to 25%; the cut would come into force in the next four years.

The government seems to have done a few things for the poor as well by introducing the social security system.

Few major announcements made by the finance minister are:

• Five ‘ultra mega’ power projects will be built to fill the yawning gap between the supply and demand of power.
• The government will invest around 70 thousand crores on the infrastructure development.
• Introduction of ‘universal social security’ that will provide the poor with an access to subsidized insurance and pensions.
• Implementation of a uniform countrywide goods and services tax (GST) by April 2016 to boost trade between different states; there are a number of different taxes in different Indian states at the present moment that make trading between them a nightmarish exercise.
• The government will transfer the welfare money direct into the recipient’s bank account to eliminate corruption and wastage.
• Wealth tax will be abolished; it will be replaced by a surcharge of 2% on the super-rich (people with an income of one crore or more).

Mr Jaitley said that the will achieve its goal of cutting the fiscal deficit to 4.1% of the GDP for the year 2014-2015 from 4.5% for the year before.

Presenting the budget, Jaitley said that the country is growing at the high rate, the inflation is down, and foreign exchange reserve is sufficient.

"We inherited a sentiment of doom and gloom. The investment community had almost written us off. We have come a long way since then. We have turned around the economy, dramatically restoring macroeconomic stability and creating the conditions for sustainable poverty elimination, job creation, durable double digit economic growth," the finance minister said.

Some experts have billed this budget as the most significant since the path-breaking budget of 1991 that liberalized the Indian market.

Experts are of the opinion that there are loop holes here and there, but if the welfare projects like the Universal Social Security is implemented as it is imagined, then the budget is nothing less than a path-breaking  one. Millions of Indian poor will come under the safety net.

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