The Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget for the financial year 2023-24 in the Parliament on 1 February 2023. This was the 3rd paperless budget in a row. The highlights of the budget are as follows:
- Rebate limit of Personal Income Tax to be increased to Rs. 7 lakh from the current Rs. 5 lakh in the new tax regime. Thus, persons in the new tax regime, with income up to Rs. 7 lakh to not pay any tax.
- Tax structure in new personal income tax regime, introduced in 2020 with six income slabs, to change by reducing the number of slabs to five and increasing the tax exemption limit to Rs. 3 lakh.
- Capital outlay of Rs. 2.40 lakh crore for Indian Railways.
- Allocation for PM Awas Yojana increased to over INR 79000 crore.
- India to grow at 7% in the Current Year.
- Green hydrogen, clean energy storage and transmission to be key drivers of government “Green Growth”.
- Three centres of excellence in Artificial intelligence will be set up in top educational institutions.
- Outlay of Rs. 479524 crore for the Digital India Programme announced.
- Open source digital insfrastructure for agriculture and an agriculture accelerator fund announced.
- Centre to provide free food grains to all antyodaya and priority households until December 2023.
- Subsidy for UPI expected to Rs. 2137 crore in FY23.
- New savings scheme for women ‘Mahila Samman Saving Certificate’ with 7.5 per cent fixed interest rate for two years,
