NEW DELHI:Terming Aadhaar as a “game changer”, finance minister Arun Jaitley Sunday said savings made through its implementation can fund three public welfare schemes of the magnitude of Ayushman Bharat – the ambitious healthcare programme to provide free hospitalisation to millions of poor people.
He also attributed the successful implementation of Aadhaar to the decisive leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the Congress-led UPA remained “half-hearted” towards it because of its own contradictions and indecision.
India has further informed the US that duty reduction on products such as certain telecom network equipment, smartwatches, high-end mobile phones.
By Pranav Mukul
NEW DELHI:The issues pertaining to import tariffs on information and communication technology (ICT) equipment, on which the US has sought duty elimination, has reached the highest corridors of the government with an inter-ministerial panel comprising finance minister Arun Jaitley, commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad discussing the US’ demand at a meeting last week. According to sources, in the high-level meeting, it was discussed that “India may have to take a considered stand on the issue” so that the commerce ministry’s mandate for negotiations with the US is “unambiguous”.
India has been negotiating with the US for a mutually agreeable bilateral package on several contentious trade issues and one of the critical issue which the US Trade Representative (USTR) was pursuing strongly was tariff on ICT products. Wednesday, The Indian Express reported that the commerce ministry had snubbed the US demand to eliminate duties on seven ICT products, on account that factors such as “serious economic constraints” such as rising current account deficit and rupee depreciation “make it difficult” for India to consider the revenue loss arising out of duty elimination. India has further informed the US that duty reduction on products such as certain telecom network equipment, smartwatches, high-end mobile phones costing over Rs 10,000 and some mobile phone parts, will not benefit the US while imposing a “disproportionate and unbearable stress on a “low income country like India at a time of significant economic stress”.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley speaks during the 17th convocation of Jammu University in Jammu on Sunday. Photo: PTI
JAMMU: Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday exhorted confidence that India will retain its position of fastest growing economy in the coming decades like China did in the last three decades.
“The way the situation in the world is changing there is a great opportunity that has come in the way of India. The world keep facing its challenges and (in) the last few years India has started leaving its footprints behind. And when India is leaving its footprints behind, becoming one of the faster economies in the world, it obviously means that the opportunity for India and Indians is going to increase,” Jaitley said while addressing the 17th convocation of University of Jammu.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget 2018 in Parliament on Thursday. Photo: PTI
NEW DELHI:
In the end, politics defined the economics of the Union Budget 2018.
It was undoubtedly a ‘Big Spend’ budget of Rs24.42 trillion with unambiguous political contours and yet contained sufficient flourishes that continue to nudge India towards a market economy and a rules-based regime—walking the fine line between populism and development, as it were, to address popular aspirations.
