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Key Highlights of Union Budget 2017: Referral Bonus On BHIM App, Bharat Net Rollout And More

Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, has presented historic Union Budget for 2017-2018 in Parliament today. All eyes are on the budget allocation due to recent demonetization. As expected, Government maintained its stand to digitalise Indian economy by announcing a slew of measures to encourage people to embrace digital payments.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the highlights of the Union Budget 2017.

Union Budget 2017 – Key Highlights

  • To Encourage people to book rail tickets online, service charge on e-tickets booked through IRCTC will be withdrawn.
  • The ambitious ‘BharatNet‘ project got a much-needed Rs. 10,000 crore funding. Using this fund, Government is planning to extend high-speed broadband to 1.5 lakh gram panchayats.
  • All coaches of Indian Railways will be fitted with bio-toilets.
  • To Promote recently launched BHIM app, government has announced cashback schemes for merchants and referral bonus for customers who use BHIM app for payments.
  • Aadhar pay is in works to facilitate digital payments without credit card or smartphone.
  • To promote cashless transactions, FM has proposed to exempt BCD (basic custom duties), excise duties, CVD (countervailing duties), SAD (special additional duty) on miniaturized card readers and mPOS micro ATMs standards for version 1.5.1, fingerprint readers, scanners and iris scanners
  •  To curb huge cash transactions, FM has announced that any cash transaction above 3 lakhs will be deemed invalid.
  • A DigiGaon initiative will be launched to provide telemedicine, education, and skills through digital technology.
  • Tax rate for income between 2.5 lakh to 5 lakh per annum halved from 10% to 5%.

Let us know your thoughts on the union budget and government’s push to encourage digital payments.

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Abhinav Singh

Abhinav Singh, a software engineer who is very much interested in social engineering. He is responsible to manage all the social media profiles of Gadgets To Use. He also has a hobby of tracking new apps and gadgets and to share them with our readers as well.