Major Highlights of the Interim Budget 2024

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Why in the News?
• What is an Interim Budget?
• What Happens to the Interim Budget After the New Government Takes Office?
• Key Highlights of the 2024-25 Interim Budget

Why in the News?

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

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’.

Q1) What do you mean by Votes on Account?

As defined by Article 116 of the Indian Constitution, a vote on account is an advance grant to the government from the Consolidated Fund of India to cover short-term expenditure requirements until the new financial year begins.

Q2) What do you mean by Vote of Credit?

Vote of credit is the financial grant given to the Executive from the resources of India to meet urgent financial requirements whose details cannot be shared ordinarily in a budget.

Source: Explained | Major Highlights of the Interim Budget 2024 | Hindu