Five things Indian women get from Union Budget FY19

The Union Budget FY19 was presented on Thursday afternoon by Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, . This was the last full budget presented by the National Democratic Alliance government.

For the financial year 2018-19, the NDA government has a few incentives to offer its female citizens.

These were stated as follows.

Job opportunities

FM Jaitley in his speech stressed on the burgeoning job opportunities for women. After launching the National Health Protection Scheme to cover 10 crore poor families, he said this would increase productivity.

“Madam Speaker, these two far-reaching initiatives under the Ayushman Bharat will build a New India 2022 and ensure enhanced productivity, well-being and avert wage loss and impoverishment. These Schemes will also generate lakhs of jobs, particularly for women,” Jaitley added.

The National Health Protection Scheme would have nearly 50 crore beneficiaries providing coverage up to Rs 5 lakh per family.

Women's contribution to EPF

Come April 1 and women’s contribution to the Employees Provident Fund contribution has been reduced.

“To incentivize employment of more women in the formal sector and to enable higher take-home wages, I propose to make amendments in the Employees Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 to reduce women employees' contribution to 8% for first three years of their employment against existing rate of 12% or 10% with no change in employers' contribution,” Jaitley said.

Loans to SHGs

Loans to Women Self Help Groups will increase to Rs 75,000 crore in 2019 from Rs 42,500 crore last year.

"Women Self Help Groups (SHGs) will also be encouraged to take up organic agriculture in clusters under National Rural Livelihood Programme," Jaitley added.

MUDRA Yojana

The MUDRA Yojana or Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency Ltd. (MUDRA) was set up to provide funding to the non-corporate, non-farm sector income generating activities of micro and small enterprises whose credit needs are below Rs 10 Lakh.

The government is now proposing a lending target under the scheme, which Jaitley insinuated would benefit women.

“MUDRA Yojana launched in April, 2015 has led to sanction of Rs 4.6 lakh crore in credit from 10.38 crore MUDRA loans. 76% of loan accounts are of women and more than 50% belong to SCs, STs and OBCs. It is proposed to set a target of `3 lakh crore for lending under MUDRA for 2018-19 after having successfully exceeded the targets in all previous years,” Jaitley said.

More LPG connections

A higher number of LPG connections is expected to benefit poor women.

“We launched Prime Minister’s Ujjwala Scheme to make poor women free from the smoke of wood. Initially our target was to provide free LPG connections to about 5 crore poor women. But in view of the pace of implementation of Ujjwala scheme and its popularity among the women, we propose to increase the target of providing free connection to 8 crore poor women,” Jaitley said.