Image(ARCHIVE) Source: ibtimes

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today announced “Union Budget 2016-2017”. This time budget saw a change in focus towards the rural economy.

Important highlights of the announcement made are:

1. No changes have been made to existing income tax slabs.
2. Under the National Pension Scheme, the government announced an exemption for withdrawal of up to 40% of the corpus at the time of retirement.
3. Tax exemption for house rent allowance will be raised to Rs 60,000 from the current Rs 24,000-level.
4. An additional 1% tax on luxury cars above Rs 10 lakh was imposed by the Centre in the Union Budget today.
5. The Centre also imposed an additional infrastructure cess of 1% on small petrol cars and a 2.5% cess on diesel cars.
6. 2.87 lakh crore to be given grant-in-aid for gram panchayats and municipalities; it is the quantum jump of 228 per cent.
7. The government, in the Union Budget for 2016-17, decided to keep service tax rates unchanged at 14.5% (14% service tax + 0.5% Swach Bharat Cess).
8. Rs 38,500 crore allocated for MNREGA in 2016-17, the highest ever if the entire amount is spent.
9. 3,000 medical stores will be opened under Pradhan Mantri Jan Aushodi Yojana to make quality medicine available.
10. Rs 60,000 crore for recharging of ground water recharging.
11. A Digital depository for school leaving certificates.
12. Objective to skill 1 crore youth in the next 3 years under the PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana.
13. The target of 10,000 km of national highway and upgradation of 50,000 km of state highways in 2016/17.
14. Total allocation for agriculture and farmer welfare at Rs 35984 crores.
15. Swacch Bharat Abhiyan allocated Rs.9,500 crores.
16. 2.2 lakh renal patients added every year in India. Basic dialysis equipment gets some relief.
17. Rs. 1,700 crore for 1500 multi-skill development centres.
18. Initial sums of Rs 100 crore each for celebrating the Birth Centenary of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay and the 350th Birth Anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh.