West Bengal Budget focus on rural development and credit boost to business | Kolkata News – Times of India

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KOLKATA: Bengal finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, presenting a Rs 3,39,162-crore Budget on Wednesday, focused on rural Bengal and a host of social welfare, MSME and employment-generation schemes, including a credit card to give wings to young people’s entrepreneurial dreams.
The Budget, in a nod to the ongoing dearness allowance (DA) stir by a section of state government employees, hiked DA by 3% for 3.5 lakh government employees from March 2023.

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Under the credit scheme – Bhavishyat Credit Card – the government will provide loans of up to Rs 5 lakh to around two lakh people aged between 18 and 45 to set up micro-enterprises. The government will bear 10% of each project’s cost as margin money and provide a bank guarantee of up to Rs 25,000.
A budget for people from all walks of life: CM Mamata Banerjee
It was a budget for people from all walks of life, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said. “It is a budget for employment generation. It is a budget for farmers, householders, mothers and sisters. It is an employment-oriented budget. The Budget will boost further development of the state in terms of infrastructure and resource development,” she said.
As much as 60% of the Budget allocations was proposed for social development, 24.7% for agriculture and 9% for physical infrastructure. Finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya said the state had set up 90 lakh MSME units and increased bank loans to them to Rs 1.2 lakh crore for the 2022-23 fiscal. Similarly, loans to credit-linked 6.8 lakh self-help groups had been increased to Rs 13,660 crore in 2023-24, she said. On social welfare, the state proposed a relief for 1.9 crore women in the 25-60 age group under Lakshmir Bhandar. These women, getting a monthly grant of Rs 500 (general category) and Rs 1,000 (SC/ST) will now automatically get an old-age pension of Rs 1,000 after they turn 60. The Budget also proposed a death benefit scheme for fishermen in the age group of 18-60. Under this scheme, Matsyajeebi Bandhu, a fisherman’s family will be given a one-time grant of Rs 2 lakh in the event of his death. Bhattacharya’s speech was peppered with critiques of the recent Union Budget. “The Centre slashed allocations for MGNREGS and decreased allocations for midday meals,” Bhattacharya said, accusing the Centre of “punishing the poor” of Bengal. To make up for the “Centre’s deprivation”, particularly affecting the rural poor, the state proposed Rastashree for rural roads.
Apart from waiving khajna (land rent) and mutation of agricultural land announced earlier, the finance minister announced a full waiver on irrigation water rates for farmers. Tea garden workers in north Bengal have also been exempted from paying rural employment cess and education cess for the next two fiscals. The state government also proposed to enhance the allocations for Bidhayak Elaka Unnayan Prakalpa (BEUP) by Rs 10 lakh – to Rs 70 lakh – for conducting local area development work from the next financial year. According to estimates, the state is going to lose out around Rs 5,000 crore by way of transfers from the Centre, which the state aims to make up by strengthening the GST tax net, raising the tax compliance from 70% to 95%.

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