AAJ Tak live: Union Budget 2016-17 Highlights

The honorable Finance Minister of India Arun Jaitley will present the Union Budget for the year 2016 – 2017 on Monday, February 29, 2016.

The budget is expected to focus on stimulating growth in the country, and it will not deviate much from the fiscal deficit target set by Mr. Jaitley in his previous Budget. He is heading the crack team of budget presentation and is considered to be the face of the budget.

Arun Jaitley himself has scripted the budget speech, and he will be assisted today by Jayant Singa, Minister of State for Finance and Finance Secretary Ratan P Watal.

The Central Government is likely to propose the budget by lowering the corporate tax from 30 per cent to 29 per cent, the first cut in the series planned to bring it down over the next four years to 25 percent.

Check the complete Union budget highlights here.

Arun Jaitley will announce the road maps of these cuts along with corresponding withdrawals of tax exemptions. To meet up the increased expenditures, the finance minister will be compelled to increase indirect tax rates or by introducing new tax rates.

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Service Tax, which was hiked to 14.5% last year may get increased to the level of 18% this year. Just like Swacch Bharat cess, new cess initiatives will be initiated for programs such as Start Up India and Digital India.

Arun Jaitley will pay more attention to commodity driven sectors by providing protection measures as these industries have unexpected fall due to global demand and oversupply.

Implementation of 7th pay commission, Arun Jaitley also faces the challenge of bank recapitalization. Through the union budget, Finance Minister aims to please both farmers and investors, and we should wait and see how he will succeed in this attempt.

Whatever the case, Government will face challenges in channelizing the funds to capital investments.

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