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Jaitley to address RBI board on Monday

06:30 AM Feb 17, 2019 | Team Udayavani |

New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is scheduled to address the customary post-budget meeting of the central board of the Reserve Bank on Monday and highlight the key points of the interim Budget, including the fiscal consolidation roadmap.

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The meeting, according to sources, will take a call on the interim dividend to be paid to the government during the current fiscal.

The government expects Rs 28,000 crore from the RBI as interim dividend for 2018-19 based on the financial position of the central bank.

Last financial year, the RBI had paid an interim dividend of Rs 10,000 crore to the Centre.

The customary post-budget meeting will take place against the backdrop of a slight deviation from the fiscal deficit target for the current financial year, tax rebate for income up to Rs 5 lakh and income support scheme for 12 crore farmers.

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The government announced the ‘Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi’ (PM-KISAN) in the budget under which Rs 6,000 per year would be provided to farmers holding cultivable land of up to 2 hectares.

The government also decided to increase standard deduction from Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000 and raised the TDS threshold on interest earned on bank/post office deposits from Rs 10,000 to Rs 40,000.

In the Interim Budget, the government has projected a fiscal deficit of 3.4 per cent of the GDP for 2019-20, against the earlier target of 3.3 per cent.

The Centre also came out with a roadmap to reduce the fiscal deficit — the gap between total expenditure and revenue — to 3 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020-21, and eliminate primary deficit.

Primary deficit refers to the deficit left after subtracting interest payments from the fiscal deficit.

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