Budget 2016: Subsidies on food, fertiliser and petroleum are a bane on government finances but dealing with them, simply slashing or cutting them entirely is not possible due to the political backlash, which is a fraught task. Arun Jaitley in Budget 2016 has looked to tinker with it and here is the result. Arun Jaitley's Budget 2016 has pegged subsidies lower by over 4 per cent to nearly Rs 2.31 lakh crore for 2016-17. The subsidy bill on food, petroleum and fertilisers is estimated at Rs 2,31,781.61 crore for 2016-17 fiscal, according to the Budget proposals. The subsidy bill was Rs 2,41,856.58 crore for 2015-16 (revised estimates). (Reuters) -
In Budget 2016, government has earmarked Rs 1,34,834.61 crore for food subsidy in the next fiscal as against Rs 1,39,419 crore in the revised estimate of this fiscal. Fertiliser subsidy has been pegged at Rs 70,000 crore for 2016-17, lower than Rs 72,437.58 crore estimated for this financial year. (Reuters)
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In Budget 2016 fertiliser subsidy, the government has allocated Rs 51,000 crore for urea and Rs 19,000 crore for decontrolled phosphoric and potassic (P&K) fertilisers. Petroleum subsidy has been reduced to Rs 26,947 crore for 2016-17 from estimated Rs 30,000 crore in the current fiscal. (Reuters)
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Of Rs 26,947 crore for next fiscal, Rs 19,802.79 crore has been earmarked for LPG subsidy and the rest is for kerosene. As per the document, out of total Rs 51,000 crore allocated for urea subsidy, Rs 40,000 crore has been earmarked for domestic urea, while the rest is for imported urea. (Reuters)
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Budget 2016: Critics have dismissed the Union Budget 2016 as a 'wasted opportunity', the Opposition has called it as 'just housekeeping' with 'hollow promises' which will fool neither farmers nor weaker sections. Former FM P Chidambaram described the budget as a "wasted opportunity" and alleged that in the last two years, the government had turned its back on rural India, the agriculture sector, and the social sector programmes.