BUDGET 2016 - 2017 : HIGHLIGHTS

HIGHLIGHTS OF UNION BUDGET 2016 - 2017

Personal Finance

• No changes have been made to existing income tax slabs
• Rs 1,000 crore allocated for new EPF (Employees' Provident Fund) scheme
• Govt. will pay EPF contribution of 8.33% for all new employees for first three years
• Deduction for rent paid will be raised from Rs 20,000 to Rs 60,000 to benefit those living in rented houses.
• Additional exemption of Rs. 50,000 for housing loans up to Rs. 35 lakh, provided cost of house is not above Rs. 50 lakh.
• Service tax exempted for housing construction of houses less than 60 sq. m
• 15 per cent surcharge on income above Rs. 1 crore

Social

• Rs. 38,500 crore for Mahtma Gandhi MGNREGA for 2016-17
• Swacch Bharat Abhiyan allocated Rs.9,500 crores.
• Hub to support SC/ST entrpreneurs
• Government is launching a new initiative to provide cooking gas to BPL families with state support.
• LPG connections to be provided under the name of women members of family: Rs 2000 crore allocated for 5 years for BPL families.
• 2.87 lakh crore grants to gram panchayats and municipalities - a quantum jump of 228%.
• 300 urban clusters to be set up under Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission
• Four schemes for animal welfare.

Health

• 2.2 lakh renal patients added every year in India. Basic dialysis equipment gets some relief.
• A new health protection scheme for health cover upto 1 lakh per family.
• National Dialysis Service Prog with funds thru PPP mode to provide dialysis at all district hospitals.
• Senior citizens will get additional healthcare cover of Rs 30,000 under the new scheme
• PM Jan Aushadhi Yojana to be strengthened, 300 generic drug store to be opened

Education

• Scheme to get Rs.500 cr for promoting entrepreneurship among SC/ST
• 10 public and 10 private educational institutions to be made world class.
• Digital repository for all school leaving certificates and diplomas. Rs. 1,000 crore for higher education financing.
• Rs. 1,700 crore for 1500 multi-skill development centres.
• 62 new navodaya vidyalayas to provide quality education
• Digital literacy scheme to be launched to cover 6 crore additional rural households
• Entrepreneurship training to be provided across schools, colleges and massive online courses.
• Objective to skill 1 crore youth in the next 3 years under the PM Kaushal Vikas Yojna-FM Jaitley
• National Skill Development Mission has imparted training to 76 lakh youth. 1500 Multi-skill training institutes to be set up.

Tax

• Infrastructure and agriculture cess to be levied.
• Excise duty raised from 10 to 15 per cent on tobacco products other than beedis
• 1% service charge on purchase of luxury cars over Rs. 10 lakh and in cash purchase of goods and services over Rs. 2 lakh.
• Luxury cars to be more expensive. 4% high capacity tax for SUVs.
• Companies with revenue less than Rs 5 crore to be taxed at 29% plus surcharge
• Limited tax compliance window from Jun 1 - Sep 30 for declaring undisclosed income at 45% incl. surcharge and penalties
• Excise 1 per cent imposed on articles of jewelry, excluding silver.
• 0.5 per cent Krishi Kalyan Cess to be levied on all services.
• Pollution cess of 1 per cent on small petrol, LPG and CNG cars; 2.5 per cent on diesel cars of certain specifications; 4 per cent on higher-end models.
• Dividend in excess of Rs. 10 lakh per annum to be taxed at additional 10 per cent.

Energy

• Rs.3000 crore earmarked for nuclear power generation
• Govt drawing comprehensive plan to be implemented in next 15-20 years for exploiting nuclear energy
• Govt to provide incentive for deep water gas exploration
• Deep water gas new disc to get calibrated market freedom, pre-determined ceiling price based on landed price of alternate fuels.
• Investments and infrastructure
• Rs. 27,000 crore to be spent on roadways
• 65 eligible habitats to be connected via 2.23 lakh kms of road. Current construction pace is 100 kms/day
• Shops to be given option to remain open all seven days in a week across markets.
• Rs. 55,000 crore for roads and highways. Total allocation for road construction, including PMGSY, - Rs 97,000 crore
• India's highest-ever production of motor vehicles was recorded in 2015
• Total outlay for infrastructure in Budget 2016 now stands at Rs. 2,21,246 crore
• New greenfield ports to be developed on east and west coasts
• Revival of undeserved airports. Center to Partner with States to revive small airports for regional connectivity
• 100 per cent FDI in marketing of food products produced and marketed in India
• Dept. of Disinvestment to be renamed as Dept. of Investment and Public Asset Management
• Govt will amend Motor Vehicle Act in passenger vehicle segment to allow innovation.
• MAT will be applicable for startups that qualify for 100 per cent tax exemption
• Direct tax proposals result in revenue loss of Rs.1060 crore, indirect tax proposals result in gain of Rs.20,670 crore

Agriculture

• Total allocation for agriculture and farmer welfare at Rs 35984 crores
• 28.5 lakh hectares of land will be brought under irrigation.
• 5 lakh acres to be brought under organic farming over a three year period
• Rs 60,000 crore for recharging of ground water recharging as there is urgent need to focus on drought hit areas cluster development for water conservation.
• Dedicated irrigation fund in NABARD of Rs.20.000 cr
• Nominal premium and highest ever compensation in case of crop loss under the PM Fasal Bima Yojna.

Banking

• Banks get a big boost: Rs 25,000 crore towards recapitalization of public sector banks. Banking Board Bureau will be operationalised, we stand solidly behind public sector banks.
• Target of disbursement under MUDRA increased to 1,80,000 crore
• Process of transfer of government stake in IDBI Bank below 50% started
• General Insurance companies will be listed in the stock exchange
• Govt to increase ATMs, micro-ATMs in post offices in next three years

On coming Thursday i.e 25th February,2016 Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu is going to presenting his second Rail Budget and on 29th February, 2016 Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will present the General Budget in the Lok Sabha for the year 2016 - 2017. This year people can share their thoughts via the official web channel. The idea is to get information and opinion across the country. The government is asking the remarkable question to each and every citizen. 

Budget 16 - 17 : Share your Opinion

The question is:- What scheme in your opinion touches the lives of common man the most and How? 

RAILWAY BUDGET 2016 - 2017 and TWITTER

While taking Railway Budget 2016-2017, IR twitter team is expecting a large number of tweets, for the normal day itself they are handling 4500 to 5000 tweets a day. 

Backed by a software that can differentiate tweets on the basis of sentiments- i.e. Positive, negative and neural. The software also help them to segregate budget related tweets, and the software is using the key words such as good, bad and fantastic to measure the mood.

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said that “Twitter is one of several strategies being adopted by the Railways to improve its customer services. We respond to each telephone call, email and letter,“ he says. “Earlier, only the letters coming from VVIPs were replied to. Now, we respond to each letter that we receive. Phone calls are recorded and responded to. I have made it mandatory for each GM (general manager) and DRM (divisional railway manager) to be active on Twitter,“ he adds. 

In the case of tweets related to railway, IR has five workstations controlled by computer experts and are called agents. After the software segregates the tweets based on sentiments, each of the agents get 500 tweets a day and for further actions it will send to GMs and DRMs based on low, high and urgent base. The twitter has only 140 characters. Following are the Step by step treatment of a tweet by railway.

Step 1

• By using Software, incoming tweets are segregated into three categories.
• Positive, Negative and Neutral
• Keywords like bad,good,stingy and fantastic are used to gauge sentiments and segregate incoming tweets.
• Every tweets is given a ticket, meaning a number.

Step 2

• After categorization, each person sitting at a terminal(called agents 1,2,3...) gets about 500 tweets to handle.
• An agent fine tuners priority(high,low and urgent)like tweets on medical cases, theft, accidents(these are in urgent category)
• Action is take on about 70 tweets per day.

Step 3

• Once an action is taken the status on the desk board says "closed"
• An officer at the division level files a closing internal report that does not get reflected on the screen for agents to see.

How to share the opinion about Union Budget and Railway Budget 2016 - 2017 via Web Channel?

You can share your thoughts about Union Budget 2016 - 2017 and Railway Budget 2016 - 2017 by visiting the official website:-  discussonbudget.inbministry.in 

After visiting this website you can click on to the "Share your Thoughts here" button. Once you have clicked that option system will ask you following inputs

• Your Name
• Mobile Number
• E Mail ID
• Twitter and Facebook ID (Optional)
• Now Share your thoughts with Maximum 200 Words

After entering all these information you have to press "Submit" button to share your opinion.  

Authorities are also promised that the best entries will share on their official Social media Channels too.

Also you can share your thoughts with #RailBudget2016 and #Budget2016 

One more option also provided by railway, you can share your Videos and Photos via #ExpectationsRailBudget2016 tag also.

Share your suggestion immediately without wasting time.

Posted in: Budget,Indian Railway