Union Budget 2023: Walking a tightrope between populism and prudence, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday presented the Budget for the fiscal year 2023-24. In her fifth full budget after taking over as Finance Minister in July 2019, she announced some changes in duties as well as taxes that will drive commonly used items to get cheaper and costlier.
Here’s a list of items that are set to get cheaper or more expensive.
Budget 2023: Things to be costlier:
Imported cars: Fully imported luxury cars and EVs set to be costlier as custom duty hiked from 60 per cent to 70 per cent
Cigarettes: Taxes on cigarettes increased by 16 per cent
Gold items: Basic duty hiked on items made from gold
Platinum: Articles made of Platinum set to be expensive
Silver items: Things made of Silver will be costlier
Kitchen electric chimney: Kitchen electric chimney will be expensive as customs duty increased to 15 per cent from 7.5 per cent
Budget 2023: Things to be cheaper:
Television sets: TV sets would be cheaper as customs duty on parts cut to 2.5 per cent
Mobile phone: Mobile phone set to be less expensive as the Finance Minister proposes to cut customs duty on the import for the manufacturing of mobile phones manufacturing
Shrimp: Customs duty reduced on the domestic manufacturing of shrimp to promote exports
Lab-grown diamonds: Basic customs duty on seeds used in manufacturing of lab-grown diamonds slumped.
Bicycles: Bicycles will be cheaper
Budget 2023 is underlined highly as significant as the country is going to face the next Lok Sabha election in April-May 2024.
According to the Economic Survey, GDP is likely to grow in the range of 6 percent to 6.8 per cent in the fiscal year 2023-24, which is in comparison to the estimated 7 per cent this fiscal and 8.7 per cent in 2021-22.