KalingaTV News Network
New Delhi :Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday tabled the General Budget 2018-19 in the Lok Sabha. He expressed hope that economy will grow at 7.2 percent to 7.5 percent in the second half of 2018-19. He exuded confidence that India is on track to grow at 8 percent. However, he chose to keep income tax slabs unchanged for the next fiscal.
Jaitley announced that Agri-Market Development Fund with a corpus of 2000 crore rupees will be set up for developing agricultural markets. A Restructured National Bamboo Mission will be launched with an allocation of 1290 crore rupees to promote the bamboo sector in a holistic manner.
The government will also set up fishery and aquaculture infrastructure fund and an animal husbandry infrastructure fund with a total corpus of 10,000 crore rupees.
Jaitley said the government has successfully implemented series of structural reforms as a result of which India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. He said FDI has gone up and Indian economy is now a 2.5 trillion economy.
The Finance Minister said that by 2022, every block with more than 50 percent ST population will have Ekalvya schools at par with Navodaya Vidyalayas.
On healthcare, Mr Jaitley said that 10 cr families will be provided Rs 5 lakh cover per family per year for treatment and added that Govt to allocate Rs 600 crore towards the nutritional support of tuberculosis patients.
Jaitley said Govt is to set up 24 new medical colleges and hospitals by upgrading district level ones. He said, Rs 1,200 crore to be allocated for Ayushman Bharat programme in 2018-19.
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