Highlights of Union Budget 2013-14

Finance minister P Chidambaram unveiled a bigger-than-expected outlay for 2013-14 fiscal in one of the most highly anticipated Indian budgets of recent years. India faces challenge of getting back to its potential growth rate of 8%.

Following are few highlights of the Budget 2-13-14:

Revised estimate for total expenditure is 14.3 trillion rupees in 2012-13, which is 96% of budget estimate

Fiscal deficit seen at 5.2% of GDP in 2012-13

Fiscal deficit seen at 4.8% of GDP in 2013-14

Total budget expenditure seen at 16.65 trillion rupees in 2013-14

Plan expenditure seen at 5.55 trillion rupees in 2013-14

Non-plan expenditure estimated at about 12 trillion rupees in 2013-14

Set aside 100 billion rupees towards spending on food subsidies in 2013-14

India will need more than $75 billion this year and next year to fund current account deficit

Proposes surcharge of 10% on rich taxpayers with annual income of more than 10 million rupees a year

To increase surcharge to 10% on domestic companies with annual income of more than 100 million rupees

To continue 15% tax concession on dividend received by India companies from foreign units for one more year

Propose to impose withholding tax of 20% on profit distribution to shareholders

To introduce commodities transaction tax (CTT)

CTT on non-agriculture futures contracts at 0.1%

Plans to issue inflation-indexed bonds

Proposes capital allowance of 15% to companies on an 1 billion rupees

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) can use investments in corporate, government bonds as collateral to meet margin requirements

Investor with less than 10% stake in a company will be regarded as FII, more than 10% stake as FDI