Yesterday Finance Minister presented Pro-Poor Pro farmer Budget in Parliament; Draws the plan for India to grow to be 5th largest economy in the world soon with Aim to strengthen agriculture, rural development, health, education, employment, MSME and infrastructure sectors.
Similar to Obama Care Scheme World's largest govt-funded health programme - 'National Health Protection Scheme' was declared. It will cover 10 crore poor and weak families by providing upto Rs 5 lakh per family per year. The government will launch 'Revitalizing of Infrastructure and Systems in Education' by 2022 with a total investment of Rs 1 lakh crore in next 4 years.
The focus is on low-cost farming, higher Minimum Support Price of all crops shall be raised to at least 1.5 times that of the production cost.
Hard work of farmers resulted in a record production of more than 275 million tonnes of food grain and about 300 million tonnes of horticultural produce, FM said.
He proposed to raise institutional credit for agriculture to Rs 11 lakh crore for 2018-19. National Livelihood Mission allocated Rs. 5,750 cr in 2018-19.
Bamboo is green gold and restructured National Bamboo Mission will be launched with an allocation of Rs 1,290 crore to promote the bamboo sector in a holistic manner, Jaitley said.