Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a big budget ahead of next year’s general elections, including massive capital outlays in infrastructure and agriculture, as well as reworked tax slabs to benefit the middle class.

Here’s your 10-point Budget 2023 cheatsheet:

1. In the final complete budget before next year’s general elections, the government has identified seven priority areas. The areas are “inclusive development, reaching the last mile, infrastructure and investment, unleashing potential, green growth, youth power, and financial sector,” according to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
2. The next fiscal year’s capital investment outlay will be increased by 33% to 10 lakh crore, or 3.3% of GDP in 2023-2024, according to the finance minister.
3. The government has reworked the income tax slabs in the new tax regime and increased the rebate limit to 7 lakh a year, up from 5 lakh, in a big push for income tax relief ahead of an election year.
4. The investment cap for the Monthly Income Scheme and Senior Citizens’ Saving Scheme has also been raised, which is a significant step forward for senior citizens.
5. The agricultural credit target has been raised to 20 lakh crore, and the allocation for the PM Awas Yojna has been increased by 66% to over 79,000 crores.
6. The minister has announced a 2.4 lakh crore outlay for railways, the highest in nearly a decade and four times the previous year’s budget. “This is about nine times the outlay made in 2013-14,” she said, referring to the final year of the Congress-led UPA administration.
7. Ms. Sitharaman stated that the government is aiming to produce 5 MT of Green Hydrogen by 2030, with a focus on switching to green fuel.
8. The government will introduce another dispute resolution scheme under Vivad Se Vishwas-2 to ease business and settle commercial disputes. According to the minister, there will be a one-stop solution for reconciling IDs maintained by various government agencies. PAN will be used as a unique identifier for all digital systems of the government agencies listed.
9. The government will also establish a national digital library for children and adolescents, restructure teacher training through various programs, and launch new initiatives to boost pharmaceutical research and innovation. The government will hire 38,800 teachers for Ekalavya Model Residential Schools over the next three years.
10. The current fiscal year’s fiscal deficit target of 6.4% will be maintained in the revised estimate. Ms. Sitharaman stated that it will be reduced to 5.9 percent for the fiscal year 2023-2024.

Let’s see Netizen’s Comments on the budget: