Budget 2018: Major highlights from Finance Minister's speech

New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday presented the Union Budget 2018 in the Parliament stating that the Indian economy has performed very well since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government took over the political reigns of the nation in May 2014.

The Finance Minister also ensured to double the farmer income by year 2022.

Here are the major highlights from the speech of the Finance Minister.

What Finance Minister said:

• Indian economy has performed very well since our Govt took over in may 2014, It is now the seventh largest in the world.
• India now a $2.5 trillion economy and firmly on path to achieve 8 per cent plus growth soon.
• Indian Exports grew at 15 per cent in 2017-18.
• We will work to double farmer income by 2022.
• From ease of doing business, our government has moved to ease of living for the poor and middle class.
• We will focus on farm and non-farm employment for farmers.
• Three major projects Ujjwala Yojana, Saubhagya Yojana and Awas Yojna have provided crores of free LPG, power to 4 crore families and has worked towards providing interest rate relief to mid-level sections.
• We have transformed the nation into the fastest growing economy in the world.
• We have controlled stent prices.
• The focus is on low-cost farming, higher MSP. Emphasis is on generating farm & non-farm employment for farmers.
• I am very happy to announce that minimum support price has been set at 1.5 times the production cost for kharif crops.
• India's Direct Benefit Transfer scheme is a global success story.
• Agri-Market Development Fund with a corpus of 2000 crore to be set up for developing agricultural markets.
• Will focus on agriculture and rural economy, health, infra and senior citizens.
• Hope to grow at 7.2 per cent-7.5 per cent in the second half of 2017-18.
• Allocating natural resources in a more transparent manner, there is a premium on honesty now.
• Government led by PM Modi has implemented a series of fundamental structural reforms.
• Allocation for Ministry of Food Processing is being doubled; specialised agro-processing and financial institutions to be promoted by the government.
• National Health Protection Scheme to cover 10 crore poor and vulnerable families, benefiting approximately 50 crore people.
• Airport capacity to be increased by five times.
• Demonetisation was received by honest tax-payers as 'Imandari ka Utsav'.
• The Centre is proposing changes in refixing salaries of Members of Parliament. Law will provide automatic revision of emoluments of the MPs every 5 years indexed to inflation