With Elections Lined Up, What We Can Expect In This Year's Budget

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government will be trying to woo back rural voters and small businesses when it announces the 2018/19 budget on Thursday and pick up economic momentum as it heads into a season of elections, officials said.

The Centre may dole out incentives to promote electric vehicles in the country by considering lower GST and extending tax benefit for buyers in this week's Budget for 2018-19, say sources. The announcement is expected in view of the government's aim to have 100 per cent electric vehicles for public mobility and 40 per cent for personal mobility by 2030.

Ahead of the Union Budget, corporate America has urged Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for further reduction in tax uncertainty for multinational companies and institutional investors, a step which it said would help attract more foreign direct investments to India

At present, the GST has four rates of 5 per cent, 12 per cent, 18 per cent and 28 per cent.

Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan spoke to NDTVs Prannoy Roy on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. Raghuram Rajan spoke on a number of topics ranging from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and its effects on the Indian economy to digital payments and much more.

The Jaguar portfolio in India includes models like XE, XF, F-PACE and XJ while the Land Rover range includes the Discovery Sport, Range Rover Evoque among others.

On the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan spoke to NDTV's Prannoy Roy about the Indian economy, GST and its long term effects, digital payments and more.

The export items mainly include marine and seafood products, automobile tyres and bicycle tyres/tubes, leather and articles of leather, yarn and fabric of wool, glass handicrafts and bicycles, Finance Ministry said.

"One crore taxpayers have been registered under GST till January 24, of which 17.11 lakh are composition dealers," an official statement said.

Total collections under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in November had slipped for the second straight month to Rs 80,808 crore, from over Rs 83,000 crore in October.

With a cross-border trade of $64 billion in 2016, the Asean block is the country's fourth biggest trading partner.

Bharti Realty sees big shift in demand towards organised real estate developers post introduction of new real estate law RERA and GST, MD and CEO S K Sayal said.

Goods and Services Tax (GST) which unifies over a dozen local taxes, including excise and service tax, was implemented from July 1, 2017.

Union Budget 2018-19 will be Narendra Modi government's fifth and last full-fledged budget presentation before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. While the budget session of parliament will begin from January 29, the Union Budget will be presented on February 1 around noon.  This year's budget session is crucial as it comes after the Modi government made two very big fina...