New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech Saturday, announced that her government will provide ID cards to gig workers. Gig workers will also be provided with access to healthcare via a social security scheme.
The FM said her government will invest in street vendors and online and urban workers. Gig workers of online platforms to be provided are with identity cards and registration on e-Shram portal. The Finance Minister announced a social security cover for nearly 1 crore gig workers and a Rs 10,000 crore fund for startups. Another major announcement was setting a target of at least 100 gigawatts of electricity from nuclear energy by 2047 and an amendment to nuclear liability regulations to allow private sector investment. Sitharaman also announced reduction in duties on a raft of goods including open cells, while fully exempting critical minerals such as cobalt, scraps of lithium-ion battery, lead, zinc and a few others from import duty. Among other announcements were duty cuts on intermediaries and certain lifesaving drugs. To balance the revenue lost, she budgeted a modest increase in capital spending at Rs 11.21 lakh crore in the next financial year compared to a lowered Rs 10.18 lakh crore in current fiscal.
The 6.4 per cent GDP growth estimated for the current fiscal and 6.3 to 6.8 per cent in the next are well below the 8 per cent growth needed to meet the ambitious goal of making India a developed nation by 2047.
“Our endeavour will be to keep the fiscal deficit each year such that the central government debt remains on a declining path as a percentage of the GDP,” she said, projecting debt at 50 per cent of GDP by March 2031.
Other measures include a national mission to push high-yielding crops with a special focus on pulses and cotton production, hike in the limit of subsidised credit to farmers to Rs 5 lakh from Rs 3 lakh, missions to push manufacturing and exports, a new policy for labour intensive sectors like leather and footwear and a scheme to make India a global hub for toy manufacturing.