Key highlights of the Interim Budget 2019–20

The key high­lights of the Inter­im Bud­get 2019–20 pre­sent­ed by Shri Piyush Goy­al in Par­lia­ment today are as follows:

• 

Income Tax

• Per­sons hav­ing Total Income upto Rs. 5 lakh exempt­ed from Income Tax. Basic Exemp­tion lim­it and Tax Slab has been remain unchanged.  There­fore per­sons hav­ing income more than 500000 would not get any ben­e­fit and would be tax­able at the same rate as was in last year. 

• Stan­dard Deduc­tion for salaried per­sons to be raised to Rs. 50,000 from Rs. 40,000
• TDS thresh­old to be raised from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 40,000 on inter­est earned on bank/post office deposits. Bank would deduct TDS only if Inter­est income exceeds Rs.40,000 in a year.
• Tax exempt­ed on notion­al rent on a sec­ond self-occu­pied house. No tax to be paid on Notion­al rental income on 2^nd House Property
• TDS thresh­old for deduc­tion of tax on rent to be increased from Rs. 1,80,000 to Rs. 2,40,000
• Ben­e­fit of rollover of cap­i­tal gains u/s 54 increased from invest­ment in one res­i­den­tial house to two res­i­den­tial hous­es for cap­i­tal gains up to Rs. 2 crore.
• Tax ben­e­fits for afford­able hous­ing extend­ed till 31st March, 2020 under Sec­tion 80-IBA of Income Tax Act
• Tax exemp­tion peri­od on notion­al rent, on unsold inven­to­ries of builders, extend­ed from one year to two years

Farm­ers

• 12 crore small and mar­gin­al farm­ers to be pro­vid­ed with assured year­ly income of Rs. 6000 per annum under PM-KISAN
• 2% inter­est sub­ven­tion to Farm­ers for Ani­mal hus­bandry and Fish­eries activ­i­ties; addi­tion­al 3% in case of time­ly repayment.

Labour

• Prad­han Mantri Shram Yogi Maand­han scheme to ensure fixed month­ly pen­sion to 10 crore unor­ga­nized sec­tor workers
• Rs 3000 per month after 60 years of age with an afford­able con­tri­bu­tion of only Rs 100/55 per month

MSME and Traders

• 2% inter­est sub­ven­tion on an incre­men­tal loan of  Rs 1 crore for GST reg­is­tered SMEs
• Atleast 3% of the 25% sourc­ing for the Gov­ern­ment under­tak­ings will be from women owned SMEs

Rail­ways

• Cap­i­tal sup­port of Rs.64,587 crore pro­posed in 2019–20 (BE) from the budget
• Over­all cap­i­tal expen­di­ture pro­gramme to be of Rs. 1,58,658 crore

Oth­er Proposals

• Defence bud­get to cross Rs 3,00,000 crore for the first time ever
• The Gov­ern­ment to make 1 lakh vil­lages into Dig­i­tal Vil­lages over next five years
• 22^nd AIIMS to be set­up in Haryana
• Rs. 60, 000 crore allo­ca­tion for MGNREGA in BE 2019–20
• 25% addi­tion­al seats in edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions to meet the 10% reser­va­tion for the poor
• Allo­ca­tion to be increased by 21% to Rs. 58,166 crore in 2019–20 BE over 2018–19 BE for North east
• New Nation­al Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence por­tal to sup­port Nation­al Pro­gram on Arti­fi­cial Intelligence

Fis­cal Programme

• Fis­cal deficit pegged at 3.4% of GDP for 2019–20
• Tar­get of 3% of fis­cal deficit to be achieved by 2020–21.
• Fis­cal deficit brought down to 3.4% in 2018–19 RE from almost 6% sev­en years ago
• Total expen­di­ture increased by over 13% to Rs.27,84,200 crore in 2019–20 BE
• Cap­i­tal Expen­di­ture for 2019–20 BE esti­mat­ed at Rs. 3,36,292 crore
• Cen­tral­ly Spon­sored Schemes (CSS) allo­ca­tion increased to Rs. 3,27,679 crore in BE 2019–20
• Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Mis­sion allo­ca­tion increased by about 20% to Rs. 38,572 crore in BE 2019–20
• Allo­ca­tion for Inte­grat­ed Child Devel­op­ment Scheme (ICDS) increased by over 18% to Rs. 27,584 crore in BE 2019–20
• Sub­stan­tial increase in allo­ca­tion for the Sched­uled Castes and Sched­uled Tribes -
• Allo­ca­tion for SCs increased by 35.6% — from Rs. 56,619 crore in BE 2018–19 to Rs. 76,801 crore in BE for 2019–20
• Allo­ca­tion for the STs increased by 28% — from 39,135 crore in BE 2018–19 to Rs. 50,086 crore in 2019–20 BE
• Gov­ern­ment con­fi­dent of achiev­ing the dis­in­vest­ment tar­get of 80,000 crore
• Focus now on debt con­sol­i­da­tion along with fis­cal deficit con­sol­i­da­tion programme