The Union Budget for 2026-27, unveiled by Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, 2026, represents a significant step towards realizing a Viksit Bharat. It aims to strike a balance between swift economic growth and essential elements like inclusion, capacity building, and long-term resilience. One of the standout features of Budget 2026 is the introduction of numerous new schemes and missions that span various sectors, including manufacturing, MSMEs, infrastructure, agriculture, social justice, sports, education, and emerging technologies.
Key highlights of Union Budget 2026-27
- Yuva shakti-driven budget emphasizes on government’s ‘sankalp’ to focus on poor, underprivileged and the disadvantaged
- First budget prepared in kartavya bhawan inspired by 3 kartavya
- First kartavya is to accelerate and sustain economic growth
- Second kartavya is to fulfil aspirations of people and build their capacity
- Third kartavya, aligned with vision of sabka sath, sabka vikas
- New income tax act, 2025 to come into effect from april 2026, simplified income tax rules and forms to be notified shortly
- Multiplicity of proceedings to be reduced to rationalise penalty and prosecution
- Deduction already available to certain primary cooperative societies to be extended to cattle feed and cotton seed
- Single category ofinformation technology services with common safe harbour margin of 15.5%
- 2000 crore threshold for availing safe harbour for it services, up from 300 crore rupees
- Foreign cloud service provider to be given tax holiday till 2047
- Exemption from minimum alternate tax to all non-residents paying tax on presumptive basis
- Ministry to set up joint committee to modify indas to do away with separate accounting requirement based on icds from tax year 2027-28
- Stt on futures to be raised to 0.05% from present 0.02%
- Basic customs duty exemption given to capital goods used for manufacturing lithium-ion cells for batteries to be extended.
- Basic customs duty to the import of capital goods required for processing of critical minerals to be exempted
- Tariff rate on all dutiable goods imported for personal use to be reduced from 20% to 10%
- Basic customs duty on 17 drugs or medicines to be exempted.
- Biopharma shakti with an outlay of ₹ 10,000 crores to build the ecosystem for domestic production of biologics and biosimilars
- ₹10,000 crore sme growth fund proposed to create msme’s as future champions
- Public capex enhanced from ₹11.2 lakh crore in be 2025-26 to ₹12.2 lakh crore in fy 2026-27
- Seven high-speed rail corridors between cities will be developed as ‘growth connectors’ to promote environmentally sustainable passenger systems
- Indian institute of creative technologies, mumbai to setup avgc content creator labs in 15,000 secondary schools and 500 colleges
- To address the challenges for girl students in higher education stem institutions, one girls hostel will be established in every district
- Government announces a scheme for upskilling 10,000 guides in 20 tourist sites through a standardized, high-quality 12-week training course in hybrid mode, in collaboration with an iim
- Khelo india mission to transform the sports sector over the next decade
- Bharat-vistaar, a multilingual ai tool to integrate the agristack portals and the icar package on agricultural practices with ai systems
- Overseas tour program package reduced from the current 5 percent and 20 percent to 2 percent
- Customs warehousing framework to be transformed into a warehouse operator-centric system with self-declarations, electronic tracking and risk-based audit
- Cargo clearance approvals from various government agencies to be seamlessly processed through a single and interconnected digital window by end of the financial year
