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The Gujarat Budget for the fiscal year 2023-24 was presented in the state Assembly by Finance Minister Kanu Desai on Friday, giving a big push to infrastructure facilities.
The Finance Minister, in his third consecutive budget, announced to spend approximately Rs 5 lakh crore in the next five years for creating world-class infrastructure facilities in the state. Desai stated that better infrastructure will attract new business and investment leading to an increase in productivity and competitiveness and will ultimately lead to a better standard of living. With this the FM announced the provision of Rs 5,950 crore for the Narmada Project, which he said has proved to be a boon for the people and economy of Gujarat as through the project, water has become available for agriculture, two hydro-power stations with the capacity of 1,450 MW, which generated 6,000 crore units of power in the current year. Provision of Rs 2,500 crore has been made for strengthening the rural infrastructure, Rs 1,391 crore under MNREGA, Rs 932 crore under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Gramin) and Rs 220 crore for Pradhanmantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana - Watershed Development Component. Besides this, a provision of Rs 1,066 crore has been made to achieve the target of providing houses to approximately 1 lakh people during the next year under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana - Shehri. Rs 905 crore has been allocated for metro projects in Ahmedabad and Surat. A provision of Rs 200 crore to cover equity contribution for the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project was also announced in the state budget. Further, the Finance Minister announced that 2,000 new GSRTC buses will be put in place to augment the facilities for the passengers and to reduce traffic and thereby pollution. 7 bus ports on the PPP model will be made operational to provide facilities similar to the airports at these bus stations. Further adding, Desai stated that a provision of Rs 150 crore has been made for Sabarmati riverfront near Gandhinagar, GIFT City and Rs 103 crore will be allotted under the scheme to construct check-dams, barrages, weirs on the rivers in the tribal belt of south Gujarat. The Finance Minister ended his speech by announcing that no change in the tax has been proposed in the Budget 2033-24 and that of reduction of 10 per cent in VAT on PNG (Piped Natural Gas) and CNG (Compressed Natural Gas). (ANI)
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