Union Budget 2023-24 Highlights: Indian Railways received a major boost from the Union Budget 2023-24 being presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Parliament on Wednesday.
The Finance Minister in her Budget speech announced that Indian Railways will get a capital outlay of Rs 2.40 lakh crore, the highest ever till date, which will help roll out major projects, including new Vande Bharat trains, electrification of railway lines and others.
The Railways is likely to roll out 75 Vende Bharat trains by August 2023.
12:00 pm In the ChatGPT era, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday announced the government will open three centres of excellence for artificial intelligence (AI) at top educational institutions.
Presenting the Union Budget for FY24, the minister said that the aim is to fully realise the mission of 'Make AI in India'.
"For realising the vision of 'Make AI in India' and 'Make AI Work for India', three Centres of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence will be set up in top educational institutions," she informed.
The government has already embarked on this AI revolution with MeitY, NASSCOM, and DRDO having created the roadmap for AI in the country.
The Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) has already been established for AI-related research and development.
The use cases of AI currently include biometric identification, facial recognition, criminal investigation, crowd and traffic management, agriculture, healthcare, education and more.
A task force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) was constituted on August 24, 2017.
In the 2018 Union Budget, the government had said it will establish CoEs for research, training and skilling in Robotics, AI, digital manufacturing, Big Data Analytics, quantum communication and IoT.
11:30 am In order to make KYC process simpler, Union Finance Minister announced various measures and said the Permanent Account Number (PAN) will be single identifier for all government work.
11:05 am: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has begun her budget speech.
While presenting the Union Budget 2023-24 in Lok Sabha, Sitharaman said the Indian economy is on a "right track and heading towards a bright future".
"Our focus on reforms and sound policies resulting in Jan Bhagidari helped us in trying times, our rising global profile is due to several accomplishments," she said.
Sitharaman further said that the entire expenditure of about Rs 2 lakh crore under the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana is being borne by the Central government, for supplying free foodgrains for a year to all Antyodaya and priority households.
11:00 am: The Union Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved the Budget 2023-24 ahead of it being tabled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament.
10:00 am: Ahead of tabling the Union Budget 2023, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman along with Minister of States Pankaj Chaudhary and Bhagwat Karad reached Parliament to attend the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As per tradition, she earlier met President Droupadi Murmu before heading towards Parliament to present the Budget. This is the fifth presentation of the budget by Sitharaman.
"Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Smt Nirmala Sitharaman, MoS Dr Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad, MoS Shri Pankaj Chaudhary and senior officials of the Ministry of Finance called on President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan before presenting the Union Budget 2023-24," the President tweeted.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met President Droupadi Murmu at the Rashtrapati Bhavan ahead of presenting the Budget 2023-24 in Parliament on Wednesday.
Finance Minister Sitharaman will present the last budget of the Modi 2.0 government at 11 a.m.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget for 2023-24 on Wednesday in Lok Sabha.
She will lay a statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the government for 2023-24.
The Finance Minister will also lay statements of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, 2003, on medium-term fiscal policy cum fiscal policy strategy and on macro-economic framework.
Sitharaman will further introduce the Finance Bill 2023 in the Lower House.
On the first day of the Budget session which got underway on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Budget 2023-24 will aim to fulfill the aspirations of the common man.
He also said that the world is looking at the Indian economy as a bright spot.
The same day, the Economic Survey 2022-23 was tabled in Parliament which projected the Indian economy to grow 6-6.8 per cent in 2023-24 with a baseline growth rate of 6.5 per cent.
Though the survey presents an optimistic growth outlook for next year, it also highlights the risk of an "entrenched inflation" and hence "higher and longer" interest rates, and a "depreciating rupee" leading to higher current account deficit, both on account of global headwinds.
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