Budget 2023: Nirmala Sitharaman’s ‘middle-class bonanza Budget’
“The Union Budget for 2023-24 is focused on growth and welfare with a priority to provide support to farmers, women, marginalised sections and the middle class, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Wednesday.”
The defence minister said the Budget demonstrated the government’s commitment towards supporting growth and welfare-oriented policies that will benefit all sections of society including small business owners, farmers, and professionals alike.
Union Minister Smriti Irani said, “I’d like to extend gratitude to PM Modi. I won’t look at the Budget minutely. Going by today’s pronouncements, I believe that in the Budget, respect for women increased. I also welcome the announcement of National Digital Library for children & adolescents.”
What gets cheaper and what’s get costlier:
Cheaper
- Mobile phones
- TV
- Lab-grown diamonds
- Shrimp feed
- Machinery for lithium ion batteries
- Raw materials for EV industry
Costlier:
- Cigarettes
- Silver
- Compounded rubber
- Imitation Jewellery
- Articles made from gold bars
- Imported bicycles and toys
- Imported kitchen electric chimney
- Imported luxury cars and EVs
- 16% tax hike on certain cigarettes
- New cooperatives that commence manufacturing till March, 2024 to get lower tax rate of 15%
- Basic customs duty on crude, glycerine reduced to 2.5%.
- Import duty on silver bars hiked to align it with gold, platinum
- Extend customs duty cut on imports of parts of mobile phones by 1 year
- To promote TV manufacturing, customs duty on open cells of TV panels reduced to 2.5%
Railways gets massive boost:
- An outlay of Rs 2.4 lakh crore provided for railways in FY24.
- It’s the highest ever highest ever allocation for Railways and is nearly nine times over FY14 allocations.
- The allocation for track renewal has been increased from Rs 15,388.05 crore in RE 2022-23 to Rs 17,296.84 crore this year.
- The Railways is likely to roll out 75 Vande Bharat trains by August 2023.
