In his budget speech the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee said that the recommendations of the task force headed by Shri Nandan Nilekani on IT strategy for direct transfer of subsidy have been accepted. He said, “Based on these recommendations, a mobile- based Fertiliser Management System (mFMS) has been designed to provide end-to-end information on the movement of fertilisers and subsidies, from the manufacturer to the retail level. This will be rolled out nation-wide during 2012. Direct transfer of subsidy to the retailer, and eventually to the farmer will be implemented in subsequent phases. This step will benefit 12 crore farmer families, while reducing expenditure on subsidies by curtailing misuse of fertilisers.”
The Finance Minister also confirmed that the government was determined to seeing a speedy implementation of UID-Aadhaar initiative. In his budget speech the Finance Minister has said, “The enrolments into the Aadhaar system have crossed 20 crore and the Aadhaar numbers generated upto date have crossed 14 crore. I propose to allocate adequate funds to complete another 40 crore enrolments starting from April 1, 2012. The Aadhaar platform is now ready to support the payments of MG-NREGA; old age, widow and disability pensions; and scholarships directly to the beneficiary accounts in selected areas.”
In order to boost the manufacturing sector the Finance Minister has said that there will be full exemption from basic customs duty on LCD and LED TV panels, and parts of memory card for mobile phones. This could lead to a minor drop in the price of these devices. With the purpose of helping the environment, the budget provides concessions for encouraging the consumption of energy-saving devices. The Finance Minister said, “I propose to fully exempt a coating chemical used for compact fluorescent lamps, from basic customs duty. Excise duty on LED lamps is also being reduced to 6 per cent.”
