Key Features of Budget 2015-2016

Key Features of Budget 2015-2016:

• After inheriting an economy with sentiments of “doom and gloom” with adverse macroeconomic indicators, nine months have seen at turn around, making India fastest growing large economy in the World with a real GDP growth expected to be 7.4% (New Series).
• Macro-economic stability and conditions for sustainable poverty alleviation, job creation and durable double digit economic growth have been achieved.

Three Key achievements:

• Financial Inclusion - 12.5 crores families financially mainstreamed in 100 days.
• Transparent Coal Block auctions to augment resources of the States.
• Swachh Bharat is not only a programme to improve hygiene and cleanliness but has become a movement to regenerate India.
• Game changing reforms on the anvil: 
•  Goods and Service Tax (GST)
•  Jan Dhan, Aadhar and Mobile (JAM) - for direct benefit transfer.

STATE OF ECONOMY:

• CPI inflation projected at 5% by the end of the year, consequently, easing of monetary policy.
• Monetary Policy Framework Agreement with RBI, to keep inflation below 6%.
• GDP growth in 2015-16, projected to be between 8 to 8.5%.
• Housing for all - 2 crore houses in Urban areas and 4 crore houses in Rural areas.
• Basic facility of 24x7 power, clean drinking water, a toilet and road connectivity.
• Electrification of the remaining 20,000 villages including off-grid Solar Power- by 2020.
• Providing medical services in each village and city.
• To strengthen rural economy - increase irrigated area, improve the efficiency of existing irrigation systems, and ensure value addition and reasonable price for farm produce.
•  To make India, the manufacturing hub of the World through Skill India and the Make in India Programmes.

Fiscal Roadmap:

• Government firm on journey to achieve fiscal target of 3% of GDP.
• Accordingly, journey for fiscal deficit target of 3% will be achieved in 3 years rather than 2 years. The fiscal deficit targets are 3.9%, 3.5% and 3.0% in FY 2015-16, 2016-17 & 2017-18 respectively.
• Need to view public finances from a National perspective and not just the perspective of the Central Government. Aggregate public expenditure of the Governments, as a whole can be expected to rise substantially.
• Disinvestment to include both disinvestment in loss making units, and some strategic disinvestment.

Good governance:

• Need to cut subsidy leakages, not subsidies themselves. To achieve this, Government committed to the process of rationalizing subsidies.
• Direct Transfer of Benefits to be extended further with a view to increase the number of beneficiaries from 1 crore to 10.3 crore.

Agriculture:

• ‘Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana’ to be fully supported.
• ‘Pradhanmantri Gram Sinchai Yojana’ to provide ‘Per Drop More Crop’.
• Rs.5, 300 crore to support micro-irrigation, watershed development and the ‘Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana’.
•  Rs.25,000 crore in 2015-16 to the corpus of Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) set up in NABARD; Rs.15,000 crore for Long Term Rural Credit Fund; Rs.45,000 crore for Short Term Co-operative Rural Credit Refinance Fund; and Rs.15,000 crore for Short Term RRB Refinance Fund.
• Target of Rs.8.5 lakh crore of agricultural credit during the year 2015-16.
• Focus on improving the quality and effectiveness of activities under MGNREGA.
• Need to create a National Agriculture Market for the benefit farmers, which will also have the incidental benefit of moderating price rises. Government to work with the States, in NITI, for the creation of a Unified National Agriculture Market.

Funding the Unfunded:

•   Micro Units Development Refinance Agency (MUDRA) Bank, with a corpus of Rs.20,000 crores, and credit guarantee corpus of Rs.3,000 crores to be created.
• MUDRA Bank will be responsible for refinancing all Micro-finance Institutions which are in the business of lending to such small entities of business through a Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana.
• A Trade Receivables discounting System (TReDS) which will be an electronic platform for facilitating financing of trade receivables of MSMEs to be established.
• Postal network with 1,54,000 points of presence spread across villages to be used for increasing access of the people to the formal financial system.
• NBFCs registered with RBI and having asset size of Rs.500 crore and above may be considered for notifications as ‘Financial Institution’ in terms of the SARFAESI Act, 2002.

From Jan Dhan to Jan Suraksha:

• Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojna to cover accidental death risk of Rs.2 Lakh for a premium of just Rs.12 per year.
• Atal Pension Yojana to provide a defined pension, depending on the contribution and the period of contribution. Government to contribute 50% of the beneficiaries’ premium limited to Rs.1,000 each year, for five years, in the new accounts opened before 31st December 2015.
• Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana to cover both natural and accidental death risk of Rs.2 lakh at premium of Rs.330 per year for the age group of 18-50.
• A new scheme for providing Physical Aids and Assisted Living Devices for senior citizens, living below the poverty line.
• Unclaimed deposits of about Rs.3,000 crores in the PPF, and approximately Rs. 6,000 crores in the EPF corpus. The amounts to be appropriated to a corpus, which will be used to subsidize the premiums on these social security schemes through creation of a Senior Citizen Welfare Fund in the Finance Bill.

12:26 PM - By yatra 0

Climate Change

Recent Scientific Findings from IPCC Fifth Assessment Report:

published in 2014 has observed that there has been an increasing trend in the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) since the advent of the industrial revolution, with about half of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions during this period occurring in the last forty years. The period 1983- 2012 is likely to have been the warmest thirty year period of the last 1400 years. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes have contributed a major portion of total GHG emissions during the period 1970 - 2010.

The ecological overshoot problem, i.e. the ecological footprint being larger than the biocapacity of the population, is an important issue in the global climate discourse. The ‘overshoot’ can also be understood in terms of the carbon budget. The risk of climate change is largely a function of total cumulative GHGs in the atmosphere.

IPCC AR5 has estimated that for temperature increase to remain below 2°C of pre-industrial levels the world can emit only about 2,900 Giga tones (Gt) of CO2 from all sources from the industrial revolution till 2100.

Global GHG Emissions from Major Sectors and Countries:

Since 2000 GHG emissions have been growing in all sectors, except agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU). Of the 49 (±4.5) GtCO2 eq (CO2 equivalent) emissions in 201035 per cent were released in the energy supply sector, 24 per cent in AFOLU, 21 per cent in industry, 14 per cent in transport, and 6.4 per cent in buildings.

India’s Progress on Climate Change National Action Plan on Climate Change:

India was one of the early adopters of a national climate change plan. Launched way back in 2008, the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) outlines policies directed at mitigation and adaptation to combat climate change. India is also working on the voluntary goal of reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP (excluding emissions from agriculture) by 20-25 per cent by 2020 as compared to the base year of 2005. The recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Emission Gap Report (2014) has recognized India as being one of the countries on track to achieve its voluntary pledges.

State Action Plans on Climate Change:

Subsequent to the NAPCC, in 2009 all the state governments were requested to prepare State Action Plans on Climate Change (SAPCC). So far, 31 states have prepared and submitted SAPCC documents. The SAPCCs have both adaptation and mitigation components to address climate change impacts, though adaptation has been identified as the more important element. A combined budgetary requirement of around Rs.11, 33,692 crore has been estimated for implementation of the 31 SAPCCs.

11:15 AM - By yatra 0

The Economy of India

The Economy of India is the tenth-largest in the world by nominal GDP and the third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). The country is one of the G-20 major economies, a member of BRICS and a developing economy that is among the top 20 global traders according to the WTO.

According to Indian Finance Ministry the growth of the Indian economy is projected to accelerate to 7.4%(2014-15) in the current fiscal compared with 6.9%(2013-14) last year.In an annual report, the IMF forecast that Indian Economy would grow by 7.5% percent in the 2015-16 fiscal year that starts on April 1, up from 7.2%(2014-15) percent in the year now ending. India was the 19th-largest merchandise and the 6th largest services exporter in the world in 2013; it imported a total of $616.7 billion worth of merchandise and services in 2013, as the 12th-largest merchandise and 7th largest services importer.Agriculture sector is the largest employer in India's economy but contributes a declining share of its GDP (13.7% in 2012-13). Its manufacturing industry has held a constant share of its economic contribution, while the fastest-growing part of the economy has been its services sector — which includes construction, telecom, software and information technologies, infrastructure, tourism, education, health care, travel, trade, banking and other components of its economy.

The post independence-era Indian economy (from 1947 to 1991) was a mixed economy with an inward-looking, centrally planned, interventionist policies and import-substituting economic model that failed to take advantage of the post-war expansion of trade and that nationalized many sectors of its economy. India's share of global trade fell from 1.3% in 1953 to 0.5% in 1983.This model contributed to widespread inefficiencies and corruption, and it was poorly implemented.

After a fiscal crisis in 1991, India has increasingly adopted free-market principles and liberalised its economy to international trade. These reforms were started by former Finance minister Manmohan Singh under the guidance of Prime Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao. They eliminated much of Licence Raj, a pre- and post-British era mechanism of strict government controls on setting up new industry. Following these economic reforms, and a strong focus on developing national infrastructure such as the Golden Quadrilateral project by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the country's economic growth progressed at a rapid pace, with relatively large increases in per-capita incomes. The south western state of Maharashtra contributes the highest towards India's GDP among all states, while Bihar is among its poorest states in terms of GNI per capita. Mumbai,Maharashtra is known as the trade and financial capital of India.

11:28 AM - By yatra 0