BUDGET 2018: of interest to goa

TOURISM: The tourism and hospitality sector hopes the Budget proposal to develop 10 prominent sites as iconic tourist destinations, upgradation of 100 adarsh monuments of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), and creation of frameworks to encourage investment in sea plane activities will attract more investments in the sector and increase tourist arrivals.

INFRA: The budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has been increased to Rs 71,000 crore for 2018-19 from Rs 64,900 crore in the ongoing fiscal. 

National Highways exceeding 9,000 km will be completed in 2018-19. Bharatmala scheme has been approved for providing seamless connectivity to interior and backward areas and borders of the country. Under the phase-I of the project, 35,000 km of highways would be constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 5.35 lakh crore.

Jaitley said the government will continue to work on redevelopment of 600 railway stations and railways plans to procure 12,000 wagons, 5,160 coaches and 700 locomotives. 

SMART CITY: Ninety-nine cities have been selected at an outlay of Rs 2.04 lakh crore. These cities have started implementing various projects like smart roads, solar roof, intelligent transport system. Projects worth Rs 2,350 crore have been completed and work of Rs 20,850 crore has been under progress.

START-UP: Promise to rationalise Overseas Direct Investment (ODI) will be welcomed by both start-ups and Investors. This would be a great boon to the Stay in India initiative as we may see the rise of Startups with an Indian Parent and Foreign Subsidiary, instead of the current norm of a Foreign Parent and Indian Subsidiaries.

Two hundred million rural Indians now have access to broadband Internet, with an additional 500,000 WiFi hotspots being introduced. The wave of digitally empowered citizens will continue to drive user engagement for startups across most domains.

Consumer Internet companies, in particular, will now have access to huge volumes of users in several segments, and their challenge will be to ensure that they can prove their value propositions clearly.

The massive health insurance programme. This scheme will give new momentum to startups in several associated domains such as insurance technology, affordable medical devices, innovations in drug delivery, and cost-effective diagnostics services.

In education, the intent to move from blackboards to digital boards is a clear signal ofencouragement to edtech startups. The fundamental install base of educational infrastructure will become more robust on the back of this support, allowing startups to pursue important value propositions such as skill &content development to improve the job readiness of the Indian youth.

PHARMA: The healthcare measures could trigger a rise in demand for medicines.