DBT for fertiliser this financial year

Corporate tax rates are to be aligned with global average taxation while removing excessive exemptions by this financial year

The Narendra Modi government has embarked on an ambitious plan to provide innovative budgeting and effective implementation of its budgetary decisions as part of its 'Transforming India' initiative.

Some of the recommendations, with completion targets, on the budgeting front accepted by the government and to be monitored by NITI Aayog. These include direct benefits transfer for fertiliser subsidies within this financial year, planning and monitoring of projects using geographical information system in the Northeast by December 2016 and alignment of corporate tax rates with global average taxation while removing excessive exemptions within this financial year.

These recommendations were part of NITI Aayog chief executive officer Amitabh Kant's presentation at the Civil Services Day in New Delhi on Thursday and have been put up on the website of the department of administrative reforms and public grievances (DARPG).

The targets also include passage of the Aadhaar Bill, which has already been achieved, seeding of Aadhaar with 90 per cent of ration cards and PAN cards being made mandatory for all businesses and entities and serve as a unique business identifier, both by the end of this financial year.

It should be noted that some of these recommendations were announcements already made by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his 2015-16 and 2016-17 Budgets.

These recommendations were part of a presentation made by a group of secretaries to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January under the theme 'Innovative Budgeting and Effective Implementation'. It was one of the eight themes on which presentations were made.

There were other recommendations that were not accepted. These include advancing the budget cycle from a financial year to calendar year and presenting the Budget in December instead of February by 2017-18, and providing a provisional Budget two years in advance.