Union Budget 2024: What is cheaper, what gets costlier?

Pic/PTI

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday presented Union Budget 2024. While presenting the Budget, FM Sitharaman announced policies that will affect the prices of different articles for the common man.

Sitharaman presented her seventh Union Budget for the fiscal year 2024-2025. Following this, several items have become cheaper and costlier for consumers.

Here is the full list of items that will get cheaper and costlier:

Items that have become cheaper:

> Basic customs duty on mobile phones and mobile chargers to be reduced to 15%

> Three more cancer treatment drugs exempted from customs duty

> Basic customs duty on certain brood stocks, shrimps and fish feed to be reduced to 5%

> Customs duties on gold and silver are to be reduced to 6%

> Customs duties on platinum to be reduced to 6.5%

> Government proposes not to extend customs on solar energy-related parts

> Government proposes to cut customs duty for manufacturing leather and footwear

> Specified capital goods for use in manufacture of solar cells or solar modules, and parts for manufacture of such capital goods

Items that have become costlier:

> Government increases basic customs duty to 15% from 10% on specified telecom equipment.

> Poly vinyl chloride (PVC) flex films (also known as PVC flex banners or PVC flex sheets)

> Garden umbrellas

> Laboratory chemicals

> Solar glass for manufacture of solar cells or solar modules

> Tinned copper interconnect for manufacture of solar cells or solar modules

Presenting the Union Budget for 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday pegged the fiscal deficit target at 4.9 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

In the Interim Budget tabled on February 1, she pegged it at 5.1 per cent of GDP.

In 2023-24, the government pegged the fiscal deficit target for 2023-24 at 5.9 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Later, the fiscal deficit for 2023-24 was downwardly revised to 5.8 per cent.

The difference between total revenue and total expenditure of the government is termed as the fiscal deficit.

It is an indication of the total borrowings that may be needed by the government.

The government intends to bring the fiscal deficit below 4.5 per cent of GDP by the financial year 2025-26.

"The fiscal consolidation path announced by me in 2021 has served our economy very well, and we aim to reach a deficit below 4.5 per cent next year," Sitharaman said.

"The government is committed to stay the course. From 2026-27 onwards our endeavour will be to keep fiscal deficit each year such that the central government's debt will be on a declining path as a percentage of GDP," she added.

(With inputs from Agencies)