Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Finance Minister, has announced a dedicated Rs 10,000 crore SME Growth Fund to create future champions, incentivising enterprises based on select criteria as she laid the Union Budget for the fiscal 2026-27 here on Sunday.
She announced that public capex has increased manifold from Rs 2 lakh crore in FY2014-15 to an allocation of Rs 11.2 lakh crore in BE 2025-26 and in FY2026-27, she proposed to increase it to Rs 12.2 lakh crore to continue the momentum.
The Union Budget presented in the Lok Sabha on Feb 1 has identified six areas to accelerate economic growth these include, scaling up manufacturing in 7 strategic and frontier sectors, rejuvenating legacy industrial sectors, creating “Champion MSMEs”, delivering a powerful push to Infrastructure, ensuring long-term energy security and stability; and developing City Economic Regions.
The Finance Minister proposed Bharat-VISTAAR (Virtually Integrated System to Access Agricultural Resources), a multilingual AI tool that shall integrate the AgriStack portals and the ICAR package on agricultural practices with AI systems.
"This will enhance farm productivity, enable better decisions for farmers and reduce risk by providing customised advisory support," said Sitharaman.
On the taxation front, in marine, leather, and textile products, the limit for duty-free imports of specified inputs used for processing seafood products for export, is to be increased from the current 1 per cent to 3 per cent of the FOB value.
Also, the Union Budget 2026-27 makes the fish caught by an Indian fishing vessel in Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) or on the High Seas free of duty. Landing of such fish on foreign ports will be treated as export of goods.
Meanwhile, under the budgetary proposal, a Joint Committee of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Central Board of Direct Taxes to be constituted for incorporating the requirements of Income Computation and Disclosure Standards (ICDS) in the Indian Accounting Standards (IndAS) itself and separate accounting requirements based on ICDS will be done away with from the tax year 2027-28.
Key initiatives---
For fisheries, the Government will undertake initiatives (i) for integrated development of 500 reservoirs and Amrit Sarovars.
(ii) strengthen the fisheries value chain in coastal areas and enable market linkages involving start-ups and women-led groups together with Fish Farmers Producer Organisations.
For animal husbandry, the Government will provide quality employment opportunities in rural and peri-urban areas, and support the Animal Husbandry Sector in entrepreneurship development through: (a) a Credit-Linked Subsidy Programme (b) scaling-up and modernisation of livestock enterprises (c) enhance creation of livestock, dairy and poultry-focused integrated-value chains and (d) encourage creation of Livestock Farmer Producers Organisations.
For high value agriculture, the Government will support high value crops such as coconut, sandalwood, cocoa and cashew in our coastal areas. Agar trees in North East and nuts such as almonds, walnuts and pine nuts in hilly regions will also be supported.
The Finance Minister proposed a Coconut Promotion Scheme to increase production and enhance productivity through various interventions including replacing old and non-productive trees with new saplings/plants/varieties in major coconut growing States.
Further, a dedicated programme is proposed for Indian cashew and cocoa to make India self-reliant in raw cashew and cocoa production and processing, enhance export competitiveness and transform Indian Cashew and Indian Cocoa into premium global brands by 2030.