FM Nirmala Sitharaman Union Budget 2025 Speech Highlights:

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday announced significant income tax cuts for the middle class and unveiled a blueprint for next generation reforms for Viksit Bharat as she treaded a fine line between fiscal prudence and providing a thrust to growth. Individuals earning up to Rs 12 lakh in a year will not have to pay any taxes after she raised the exemption threshold from Rs 7 lakh. An additional Rs 75,000 standard deduction is available for the salaried class. She also altered tax slabs for people earning above this threshold to help save up to Rs 1.1 lakh in taxes for those with income up to Rs 25 lakh in a year. The raising of the rebate leads to 1 crore people not having to pay any tax, she said. The overall tax slab regig will benefit 6.3 crore people, or more than 80 per cent of taxpayers.”The new structure will substantially reduce taxes on the middle class and leave more money in their hands, boosting household consumption, savings and investment,” Sitharaman said presenting what was dubbed as ‘reformist’ budget for the next fiscal in Lok Sabha.

The Budget for April 2025 to March 2026 fiscal (FY26) proposed to raise foreign investment limit in insurance sector to 100 per cent from current 74 per cent and continued spending spree on infrastructure while raising allocations for social sectors as well as providing for measures for poor, youth, farmers and women. All this she did while managing to stick to the fiscal consolidation roadmap, projecting a fiscal deficit of 4.4 per cent of the GDP in FY26 as against an estimated 4.8 per cent in the current year ending March 31. Commenting on the announcements, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it is a “people’s budget” that fulfils the dreams of every Indian and said that it is a “force-multiplier” that will boost consumption, investment and growth.”The Budget lays a strong foundation to increase savings and make citizens partners in development,” he said.

Click here to download the complete Speech https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/doc/budget_speech.pdf