Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting the Union Budget 2023-24 shortly. Live updates to follow. .Indian economy has increased from being 10th to 5th in the world. EPFO membership doubled to 27 crore and digital payments of 126 lakh crore rupees made through UPI: Sitharaman.Priority no 1 is inclusive development - covering farmers, women, youth, OBCs, divyang etc. Sustained focus of Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and the North East: Sitharaman.Financial support for agri-tech startups, cooperative-based economic model, enabling of massive decentralised storage capacity for farmers: Sitharaman.Education - teachers' training to be re-envisioned through creative pedagogy. To build a culture of reading and make up for time lost during COVID-19, National Book Trust, Childrens Book Trust will be encouraged to provide non-curricular titles to physical libraries: Sitharaman.15,000 crore for Primitive Vulnerable Tribal Groups Development Mission to improve socio-economic conditions of vulnerable tribal groups - safe housing, clean drinking water, access to education etc: Sitharaman.Support for poor prisoners - for those unable to afford bail amount, required financial support will be provided: Sitharaman.2.4 lakh crore outlay for Railways - 9 times the outlay made in 2013-14; 50 additional airports, heli-dromes etc will be made for domestic travel: Sitharaman.Manual scavenging - 100 percent de-sludging of sewers to transition from manholes to machine hole mode. Focus on scientific management of dry and wet waste: Sitharaman.More than 39,000 compliances have been reduced and 3,400 legal provisions have been decriminalised to further trust-based governance. Jan Vishaws Bill to amend 42 Central Acts: Sitharaman.Three Centres for Artificial Intelligence to be setup at top institutions. National Data Governance Policy to be launched to enable access to anonymised data: Sitharaman.Settling contractual disputes of government agencies wherein arbitral award in under challenge - a voluntary settlement scheme will be introduced. Graded settlement terms, depending on pendency level of dispute: Sitharaman.Phase III of ecourts project will be launched with outlay of 7,000 crore: Sitharaman.Movement towards environmentally conscious lifestyle; aim for net zero carbon emission by 2070. Focus is on green growth: Sitharaman.Amendments to Banking Regulation Act, RBI Act are being considered: Sitharaman.To reduce pendency of tax appeals at commissioner level, 100 joint commissioner to be deployed for disposal of small appeals: Sitharaman.We shall also be selective in taking up cases for scrutiny of returns already received: Sitharaman.Five major announcements on Income Tax: Sitharaman Rebate for tax exemption increased to ₹7 lakhs.Income Tax: Rebate on income tax raised from 5 lakhs to 7 lakhs in the new tax regime. Anyone with income of less than 7 lakhs does not have to pay tax..New tax rates: 0-3 lakhs - NIL 3-6 lakhs - 5 per cent 6-9 lakhs - 10 per cent 9-12 lakh - 15 per cent 12-15 lakh - 20 per cent Above 15 lakh - 30 per cent.New tax regime to be default tax regime; citizens will have option to choose old tax regime as well: Sitharaman.Rishi Agrawal, CEO & Co-Founder, TeamLease RegTechFrom an ease of doing business perspective, this looks like a dream budget clearly acknowledging that ease of compliance is a key economic lever. It signals a technology-led transition towards paperless compliance. I am particularly excited about numerous references to ease of compliance via rationalisation and digitisation in the budget speech. While I eagerly await the fine print, continued focus on decriminalization of employer compliance via the Jan Vishwas bill is expected to mitigate deeply ingrained colonial hostility against India’s entrepreneurs. There is a clear push towards building a trust based governance model. Extending the scope of Digi-Locker to include business entities is a welcome step towards digitizing compliance. The proposal to use PAN as a common identifier is another great step towards creating a unique enterprise identity. This will eliminate the need to have over 20 different enterprise identities in the current environment. A system of unified filing process is proposed to be set up obviating the need for separate submission of same information to different agencies, reducing inefficiency and duplication of effort..Roma Priya, Founder, Burgeon Law The Central Government commitment of INR 7,000 Crore, in furtherance of the draft of the Digital Courts Vision & Roadmap: Phase III of the eCourts Project, published by the E-Committee of the Supreme Court of India, is a welcome move to ensure better accessibility to judicial infrastructure. The commitment of INR 7,000 Crore will surely be worthwhile to achieve the goals for Phase III which were envisioned by the draft of the Digital Courts Vision & Roadmap: Phase III of the eCourts Project which are as follows: (i) Installation of relevant hardware; (ii) Creation of digital infrastructure; and (iii) Enabling access to critical services..Cyril Shroff, Managing Partner Cyril Amarchand MangaldasBy laying a significant emphasis on Capex and Energy Transition, the FM has provided foundation for strong anti-cyclical momentum that should enable robust domestic economic growth and help counter the expected global headwinds.The focus on making India future ready by way of AI labs, Agri-tech, R&D in healthcare, further boosting Digital Public Infrastructure and holistically expanding physical infrastructure, augurs very well for sustained long term economic growth..Abhishek Malhotra (Managing Partner of TMT Law Practice)The Budget builds upon the progress made on the legislative and business front, to further ease compliance requirements. We see that there is a stress to introduce new policies, and introduce schemes to augment India’s proficiency in new age technologies and solutions. The Central Government has long intended for the usage of anonymized datasets, for the benefit of MSMEs, startups, and will introduce the National Data Governance Policy in the coming year, to govern such data collection, distribution protocols. The announcement to constitute 3 centres of excellence for artificial intelligence to augment our capabilities in AI development, testing, will be instrumental towards the Digital India goal as well. Added to this, the KYC processes will adopt a risk-based approach rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, to cater to startups, smaller industry players, and allow players to focus resources, R&D towards the development of the next wave of technologies like 5G, Web 3.0 and Metaverse, which will in turn enhance the growth projections of the country.
