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So, finally the much awaited day is here! Finance Minister P Chidambaram presented the Union Budget 2008-2009. Chidambaram presented his seventh full budget.

Union Budget Highlights 2008 - 09

• Debt waiver scheme and relief to small and marginal farmers

• Agri loans disbursed by rural banks, RRBs and Cooperative banks before March 2007 and overdue on Dec 2007 waived

• Overdue agri loans amount to Rs 50,000 cr under the waiver and 10,000 cr under the OTS

• Implementation of waiver to be completed by June 2008

• Farmers eligible for fresh agri loans post the waiver or one time settlement

• National Agri Insurance scheme get Rs 640 cr

• Tea Research association gets Rs 20 cr

• 500 soil testing labs to be set up in the 11th plan, govt to give 1 time budgetary assistance of Rs 75 cr to agri ministry for setting up mobile soil testing facilities

• National Horticulure Mission to get Rs 1,100 cr

• Govt sets up irrigation and water resource finance corp with an initial corpus of Rs 100 cr

• Schedule Commercial Banks farm credit 75%

• Micro irrigation scheme gets Rs 500 cr to cover 4,00,000 additional hectares

• Rs 12050 cr for strengthening rural health services

• 24 pct allocation hike for women, child development

• Inflation will be kept under check

• Jawaharlal Navoday Vidyalaya to be set in 20 new districts for SC/STs

• Healthcare allocation to be raised by 15%

• Bhopal and Tripura to get one IIScR each and 2 colleges of art

• 3 IITs to be set up in Bihar, AP, Rajasthan

• 288 public sector bank branches to be opened in areas with concentration of minorities

• Irrigation outlay increased

• National Minority Development and Finance Corp to get Rs 75 cr

• Special attention, more funds for North East

• 54 gender budgeting cells set up

• Agriculture share in total investment up from 10.2% in 2003-04 to 16% during the 11th Plan

• Agri credit target to be Rs 2,80,000 cr for 2008-09

• LIC to cover all woman SHGs linked to the bank

• Mobilisation of additional resources of Rs 10,000 cr as planned capital expenditure under Plan-B

• Allocation for ministry of minorities doubled to Rs 1,000 cr

• Schemes for woman to get Rs 1,460 cr this fiscal

• Child related schemes to get Rs 33,434 cr

• 54 departments to be set up gender budgeting divisions

• Rajiv Gandhi drinking water mission to get Rs 7,300 cr

• Rs 3,966 cr for SC/STs schemes

• Allocation of Rs 75 cr for 2008-09 for the Rajiv Gandhi felicitation programme

• Sanitation to get Rs1,200 cr

• Rs 200 cr for providing portable water system in each school in areas of water scarce regions

• IT industry gets Rs 100 cr for connecting knowledge institutions

• NREGS to be extended to 596 rural distt with an outlay of Rs 16,000cr

• The remuneration Angan Bari workers has been increased from Rs 1000 to Rs 1500 per month

• Women entitled to equal share and equal say

• Science scholarships for young learners

• 16 Central universities to be set up

• 6000 model high schools to be started

• Science scholarships for young learners

• Inflation will be kept under check

• More allocation for polio and AIDS

• Health covers of Rs 30000 for workers in unorganised sectors

• Education sector gets a boost

• Agri credit doubled in first two years

• Bharat Nirman allocation to go up to Rs 31,280 cr from Rs 24,603 cr

• Gross Budgetary support to be Rs 24,3386 cr about Rs 38,286 cr more than 2007-08

• Agriculture credit to touch 2,40,000 cr in 2008

• Focus on achievement of self-sufficiency in food grain

• Soyabean output to be 9.45 mn tonnes

• Maize production to be 16.78 mn tonnes

• Rice production to be 94.08 mn tonnes

• Total agri production to be 219.32 mn tonnes at all time high

• Agriculture disappointing at average annual growth of 2.6%

• Keeping inflation under check to be on focus

• Focus on management of supply side of food, market, capital inflows next year

• India has registered a growth of over 8%$ for 12 successive quarters till Dec 2007