Budget 2021 Highlights: Improved Healthcare, Better Infra, Bank Privatisation

New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had promised a pandemic-ravaged country that Budget 2021 would be like “never before”. Coming in the backdrop of an unprecedented health crisis, the Budget focused on facilitating growth, increasing spending on the healthcare sector and ramping up infrastructure development, and avoided pitfalls such as a Covid cess and increase in taxes.

Here are 10 highlights of Budget 2021 presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1

Doubling Outlay For Healthcare

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman accorded special attention to the healthcare sector by announcing doubling in healthcare spending to ₹ 2,23,846 crore and setting aside ₹ 35,000 crore for development of two Covid vaccines, in addition to Covishield and Covaxin.

Focus On Infra Spending

Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled a slew of projects to rejuvenate the infra sector. These initiatives included hiking the capital expenditure to ₹ 5.54 lakh crore in financial year 2022, expanding the National Infrastructure Pipeline to cover 7,400 projects by 2025 and creating a development finance institution.

Banks Privatization

The government will start privatizing two public sector banks in the forthcoming financial year, the Finance Minister said in her budget speech, without divulging the names of the banks concerned. The government could either sell the entire stake to private owners or reduce its stake below 51 per cent.

Hike In FDI Limit In Insurance

The Budget proposed an increase in the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit for insurance companies to 74 per cent from the existing 49 per cent.

Recapitalisation Of Public Sector Banks

An amount of Rs 20,000 crore would be infused into public sector banks (PSBs) in 2021-22 to meet regulatory norms. This is in addition to the recapitalization provision of ₹ 20,000 crore in the current financial year.

(NDTV FEED)