Budget approved: Rajya Sabha returns appropriation and finance Bills to Lok Sabha
New Delhi, August 9, 2024
The Upper House returned the Appropriation (No. 2) Bill, 2024, the Jammu and Kashmir Appropriation (No. 3) Bill, 2024 and the Finance (No. 2) Bill, 2024, which were passed by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
Parliamentary approval for the 2024-25 Budget was completed Thursday with Rajya Sabha returning the relevant pieces of legislation to Lok Sabha.
Rajya Sabha returned the appropriation and finance Bills for 2024-2025 after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman responded to the Opposition’s attack that the Budget was anti-middle class, saying the government had reduced the burden on the middle class.
The Upper House returned the Appropriation (No. 2) Bill, 2024, the Jammu and Kashmir Appropriation (No. 3) Bill, 2024 and the Finance (No. 2) Bill, 2024, which were passed by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
This completes the Budgetary exercise for 2024-25.
Replying to the discussion on the three Bills, the Finance Minister said the effective capital expenditure this year would be `15.02 lakh crore, an increase of 18% from 2023-2024. She said the increasing capital expenditure since 2020 had a bearing on private investment, consumption and exports.
She added that the Centre was not doing that alone, but was giving states 50-year interest-free loans, “which eventually will be treated probably as grants”.
She said allocations of `22.91 lakh crore were estimated for states in 2024-2025, an increase of `2.49 lakh crore from last year.
She said the government has simplified taxation.
“Compared with very many developed economies, which have actually increased the tax rates, despite the pressure from Covid times, we have actually reduced the burden on the middle class substantially,” the Minister said.
Responding to demands from Opposition MPs, including TMC MP Dola Sen and DMK MP Dr. Kanimozhi NVN Somu, to withdraw 18% GST on health insurance premiums, Sitharaman asked if the MPs had raised the issue with the Finance Ministers of their states who are members of the GST Council.
She said the Finance Ministers of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, among others, were members of the Fitment Committee. The matter is in the realm of the GST Council, she said. The Minister said every state imposed a tax on the premiums prior to the introduction of GST in 2017.
Sitharaman said all but one decision in the GST Council so far had been by consensus, when asked by TMC MP Derek O’ Brien why it was not rolled back given that the majority of the Finance Ministers in the GST Council were from the NDA.
Earlier, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said private investment as a proportion of GDP was sluggish and that the atmosphere was not conducive to investors. He said while government investment had increased, private investment, consumption and wages had not grown much or were stagnant.
CPI(M) MP John Brittas raised concern over the increase in allocation for centrally-sponsored schemes, while Central sector schemes, which are fully funded by the Union government, saw a decrease in budget. Aam Aadmi Party MP Sanjay Singh said the government had waived loans of `3.53 lakh crore of companies, while not being able to scrap the Agniveer scheme and restore the earlier system of Army recruitment as demanded by the youth.
[The Indian Express]
