Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today announced a series of stimulus Packages worth Rs. 2,64,000 crore under Atmanirbhar Bharat 3.0.
Wherein this, income tax relief for property developers and home buyers for residential property valued up 2 crores will be provided.
Finance Minister at the press conference said, “This will incentivize people to buy homes and the excess inventory” and this will be applicable to primary buyers only, i.e. for first time buyers only.
The differential rate between circle rate and agreement value for eligible property buyers will be doubled from 10 per cent to 20 per cent, and necessary amendments in the section 43A of income tax act will be made in due course.
In the same press meet, finance minister made several announcements related to Infrastructure, infusing equity to National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) to extent of Rs. 6,000 crores to its debt platform.
NIIF debt platform will be able to provide Rs. 1.1 Lakh crore for National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) by year 2025.
Major announcements include, increased allocation of Rs. 20,000 crore for PM Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojana, which was targeted at migrant labourers returned to native place.
So far Rs. 1 lakh core has been spent via PM Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojna, Rs. 61,000 crore via MGNREGA and Rs. 40,000 crore under Atmanirbhar 1.0, of Rs. 1 lakh crore, Rs. 73,504 crore has already been spent on generating employment of 251 crore days, which is in the informal sector.
Other Major Infrastructure and related announcements under Atmanirbhar 3.0 are as following
- Additional allocation of Rs. 18,000 crore PM Awas Yojana (PMAY) urban, finance minister expects this allocation will help 12 lakh houses to be grounded and 18 lakh houses to be completed, while increasing demand for steel, cement etc. and creating additional 78 lakh jobs
- Fertiliser Subsidy of Rs. 65,000 crore, as fertiliser consumption is expected to rise to 673 lakh metric tonnes for year 2020-21, from 500 lakh metric tonnes in year 2016-17
- Finance minister announced capital and Industrial Stimulus with allocation of Rs. 10,200 crores
- Allocation of Rs. 3,000 crore for EXIM Bank, to promote exports under line of credit schemes.
- 9,000 crore under COVID suraksha scheme for R&D and vaccine development
- Production Linked Incentive (PLI) for 10 manufacturing sectors, apart from 3 sectors already announced, this should help India to link in the global value chain, she said
Finance Minister expressed that growth will be back in positive terrain, as soon as Q3 itself, GST collection has increased 10 per cent y-o-y to Rs. 1.05 lakh crore. Bank credit growth has bettered 5.1 per cent as of October 23, 2020, net investments and FDI are positive, forex reserves are high at $ 560 billion.
RBI’s last month report predicts stronger return to growth, by 3rd quarter itself, as supposed to 4th quarter mentioned in previous reports.
She also mentioned active COVID cases have declined to 4.89 lakh from 10 lakh and fatality rate has lowered to 1.47 per cent.