The Indian Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, today presented the interim Union Budget for fiscal year 2024-25 (FY’24-25). According to BigMint’s analysis, there has been no major change in the duty structure against last fiscal.
However, in a major boost to potential steel demand, the capital expenditure outlay for infrastructure for FY’25 has been increased by 11.1% to INR 11,11,111 crore.
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Budget highlights :
Infrastructure
- The Budget emphasised that is building on the tripling of the massive capital expenditure outlay of the past 4 years, which has resulted in a huge multiplier impact on economic growth and employment creation.
- The outlay for FY’25 has been increased by 11.1% to INR 11,11,111 crore which would be 3.4% of the GDP.
Green energy
Towards meeting the commitment for ‘net-zero’ by 2070, the following measures will be taken:
- Viability gap funding will be provided for harnessing offshore wind energy potential for an initial capacity of one giga-watt.
- Coal gasification and liquefaction capacity of 100 million tonnes (mnt) will be set up by 2030. This will also help in reducing imports of natural gas, methanol, and ammonia.
- Phased mandatory blending of compressed biogas (CBG) in compressed natural gas (CNG) for transport and piped natural gas (PNG) for domestic purposes will be mandated.
- Financial assistance will be provided for procurement of biomass aggregation machinery to support collection.
Housing & solar
- Despite the challenges due to Covid, implementation of PM Awas Yojana (Grameen) continued and the country is close to achieving the target of three crore houses.
- Two crores of additional houses will be taken up in the next five years to meet the requirement arising from increase in the number of families.
- Rooftop solarisation: Through rooftop solarisation, one crore households will be enabled to obtain up to 300 units of free electricity every month.
Railways
- Three major economic railway corridor programmes will be implemented.
– These are – energy, mineral and cement corridors.
– Port connectivity corridors
– High traffic density corridors. - The projects have been identified under the PM Gati Shakti for enabling multi-modal connectivity. They will improve logistics efficiency and reduce costs.
- Metro Rail and NaMo Bharat can be the catalysts for the required urban transformation. Expansion of these systems will be supported in large cities focusing on transit-oriented development.
- Forty thousand normal rail bogies will be converted to the Vande Bharat standards to enhance safety, convenience and comfort of passengers.
Airports
- The aviation sector has been galvanized into action in the past ten years. Number of airports has doubled to 149. Roll-out of air connectivity to tier-two and tier-three cities under UDAN 19 scheme has gained momentum.
- Five hundred and seventeen new routes are carrying 1.3 crore passengers. Indian carriers have pro-actively placed orders for over 1,000 new aircraft. Expansion of existing airports and development of new ones will continue expeditiously.
MSME
It is an important policy priority for the government to ensure timely and adequate finances, relevant technologies and appropriate training for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) to grow and also compete globally. Orienting the regulatory environment to facilitate their growth will be an important element of this policy mix, the Budget stressed.