In his last full Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said India is poised to become $5 trillion economy soon from $2.5 trillion now.
His speech focused more on the education, healthcare and agriculture. From ease of doing business, our govt has moved to ease of living for the poor and middle class," he said.
Planning to boost micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), the government plans to augment lending capacity under it to Rs 3 lakh crore in 2018-19. He said two new planning and architecture schools to be set up in IITs.
The government would use technology to improve education from blackboard to digital board. It has allocated Rs 1.38 lakh crore in FY19 for government health and education programmes. Among other important announcements, the finance minister announced new standard deductions for salaried employees, while maintaining the income tax slabs from FY 2017-18.
Here is the full text of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's Budget speech in Parliament:
