Nirmala Sitharaman Press Conference Updates | Atmanirbhar Bharat 3.0 Package: 12 Measures Announced

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has unveiled the third tranche of measures under the government’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat programme in an attempt to boost economic growth from record lows.

The estimated cost of these measures would be Rs 2.65 lakh crore, the finance minister said. It was not specified how this additional spending will be funded.

The measures include:

• New scheme to incentivise job creation.
• Extending a credit guarantee scheme.
• Covering more sectors under the manufacturing performance-linked incentive scheme.
• Additional spending on PM Awaas Yojana (Urban).
• Support for construction and infrastructure contractors.
• Income tax relief for developers and home buyers.
• Further equity infusion in the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.
• Higher fertiliser subsidy for farmers.
• Additional outlay for the PM Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojana.
• Credit boost for project exports.
• Additional stimulus towards capital and industrial expenditure.
• A grant for Covid vaccine development.

Get more details about each of the announcements here.

• Rs 900 crore to be provided for Covid Suraksha Mission for Research and Development to Department of Biotechnology.
• Provision being made only towards research activity.
• Actual cost of vaccine and logistics required for distributing the vaccine is different, and will be provided.

• Rs 10,200 crore is being additionally provided towards capital and industrial expenditure
• Amount will be spent towards domestic defence equipment, industrial incentives, industrial infrastructure, and green energy.

• Rs 3,000 crore to be given to EXIM Bank for promotion of project exports through line of credit under IDEAS scheme.
• About 811 export contracts amounting to $10.50 billion being financed under LoCs.

• Additional outlay of ₹ 10,000 crore is being provided for PM Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojana, announces Finance Minister Nirmala Sithataman
• Funds can be used for MGNREGA or for Gram Sadak Yojana, will help accelerate rural economy

• Rs 65,000 crore fertiliser subsidy will be provided to farmers.
• Fertiliser consumption is going up significantly and increased supply of fertilisers at subsidised rates will ensure that forthcoming crop seasons will not be affected, the ministry said.

• Rs 6,000 crore equity infusion will be done in NIIF debt platform for funding infrastructure
• Private equity participation to also come in; NIIF has itself invested Rs 2,000 crore
• Debt platform has a loan book of Rs 8,000 crore and deal pipeline of Rs 10,000 crore

• Income tax relief will be provided to 20% of differential between circle rate and agreement value increased from 10%
• This would be applicable on primary sale of residential units of value up to Rs 2 crore
• 43CA of IT Act restricts differential between circle rate and agreement value

To provide ease of doing business and relief to contractors whose money otherwise remains locked up, performance security on contracts will be reduced to 3%.

• EMD for tenders will be replaced by bid security self-declaration.
• Relaxations till Dec. 31, 2021

Finance Minister announces additional outlay of Rs 18,000 crore under PM Awaas Yojana (Urban) for FY21.

• Additional Rs 18,000 crore to be provided for housing scheme.
• Provisions to be made via additional allocation and extra-budgetary resources.

• The government has already approved PLI scheme for 3 sectors at a cost of Rs 51,355 crore
• 10 more champion sectors bow covered under the scheme; expected to give significant boost to economic growth and employment.
• Expected to give significant boost to economic growth and employment.

Government extends existing emergency credit line guarantee scheme to March 31, 2021.

• ECLGS scheme offering additional credit up to 20% of outstanding loan extended till March 31, 2021
• Credit guarantee support to be provided to 26 stressed sectors identified by Kamath Committee plus healthcare
• Entities with credit outstanding of Rs 50 crore to Rs 500 crore will be eligible
• SMA 0 as on Feb. 29, 2020 will get additional credit up to 20% of outstanding
• Tenor of additional credit will be 5 years, including 1 year moratorium on principal repayment

• The scheme is being launched to incentivise creation of new employment opportunities during the Covid-19 recovery phase.
• This will be effective from Oct. 1, 2020, for the next two years.
• Benefits under the new scheme:
  - Any new employee joining employment in EPFO registered establishments on monthly wages less than Rs 15,000
  - EPF members drawing monthly wages of less than Rs 15,000 who made exit from employment during the Covid-19 pandemic from March 1 to Sept. 30 and is employed after Oct. 1
• Establishments registered with EPFO if they add new employees compared to reference base of employees as in Sept. 2020 under:
  - Minimum of two new employees if reference base is 50 employees or less
  - Minimum of five new employees if reference base is more than 50 employees
• Establishments registering with EPFO after commencement of scheme to get subsidy for all new employees.
• Scheme to be operational till June 30, 2021.
• Central government to give subsidy for 2 years.
• Firms with up to 1000 employees: Govt to pay employee’s and employer’s contribution to EPF of 12% each
• Firms with over 1000 employees: Govt to pay employees EPF contribution of 12%
• Employees will have to seed Aadhaar with EPFO account.

Sitharaman will announce 12 measures today under the third leg of the self-reliance scheme championed by the Narendra Modi government.

• SBI Utsav cards distributed for festival launched.
• Rs 25,000 crore provided as additional capex to Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and Ministry of Defence.
• 11 states have been sanctioned Rs 3621 crore as interest free loans towards capex.
• Over and above this, Bihar proposes to spend Rs 450 crore towards capex.

The first tranche of the self-dependence campaign associates more with the poor and needy of the country, she said.

• 28 states and union territories brought under national portability of ration cards, with inter-state and intra-state portability.
• 13.78 lakh loans worth Rs 1,373 crore sanctioned under PM Street Vendors Scheme.
• Work has commenced on making a dedicated portal for migrant workers.
• 183.14 lakh applications received, and banks have issued 157.44 lakh kisan credit cards to eligible farmers and sanctioned Rs 1.43 lakh crore in 2 phases.
• 21 states have sent proposals, and Rs 1681 crore sanctioned under the PM Matsya Sampada scheme.
• On the ECLG Scheme, Rs 2.05 lakh crore has been sanctioned to 61 lakh borrowers with total disbursals made at Rs 1.52 lakh crore.
• Rs 1.18 lakh crore sanctioned to 17 states and UTs under liquidity injection for discoms.

Nirmala Sitharaman will today announce the next set of measures to boost an already recovering economy. The recovery is being supported by more than pent up demand, she said, which talks about the strength in the rebound.

• Strong recovery clearly seen in the economy.
• Composite PMI, energy consumption, GST collections all showing healthy trends.
• Bank credit has improved, FDI inflows have risen.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has begun her address to the media. She started off with commentary around the economy and it’s recovery.

The Indian economy likely slipped into a technical recession in the second quarter of the current financial year as the GDP contracted, showed an internal now-casting model of the RBI.

The extent of contraction in July-September was much lower than in the April-June period, the data suggested.

India’s GDP is estimated to contract 8.6% in July-September after a contraction of 23.9% in the April-June quarter, according to an Economic Activity Index constructed by the RBI, using 27 high-frequency indicators. These ranged from IIP and auto sales to the Job Speak Index, U.S. industrial production and U.S. payrolls.

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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to address the media today at 12:30 p.m. amid expectations of a third stimulus package to boost India’s growth in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.

The government, according to a Reuters report, is likely to announce another round of stimulus totalling around Rs 1.5 lakh crore to help pull the economy out of its historic contraction. This comes a day after it announced production-linked incentives worth about Rs 2 lakh crore over five years for manufacturers in 10 sectors.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has announced two sets of measures earlier but was critiqued for low levels of upfront fiscal spending.

On Oct. 12, Sitharaman announced measures in the hope of front-loading consumer spending and capital expenditure. Total estimated boost to the economy may add up to Rs 1 lakh crore if the private sector matches the provisions introduced by the government for its employees, Sitharaman had said.

Earlier in May, the government had announced a Rs 20-lakh-crore package, bulk of which included monetary measures announced by the Reserve Bank of India.