Budget 2018: Govt increases education cess to 4 percent to fund health schemes

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley increased the education cess to 4 percent to help cover the costs of government-sponsored programmes in health and education.

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The government currently levies a 3 percent cess to fund primary education and the secondary and higher education.

The additional 1 percent cess will help the government raise Rs 11,000 crore.

The additional one percent cess will go towards Bharat Ayushman Programme under which Jaitley announced two major initiatives including a National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) providing health insurance worth Rs 5 lakh to 10 crore poor families.

Jaitley said NHPS is expected to benefit 50 crore people across India and called it the largest government-funded health insurance scheme to be implemented anywhere in the world.

Under NHPS, people will get medical treatment in secondary and tertiary hospitals.

Currently, the Union government provides Rs 30,000 as health insurance for poor families under Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) which is insufficient to cover most medical procedures.

The government also said it will be setting up 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres or community healthcare clinics across India to provide treatment for non-communicable diseases. The government said it will be allotting Rs 1,200 crore for the programme and said it will ask the private enterprises to join the programme as part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

The government said it will be spending  1.38 lakh crore in FY19 on health, education and social sector.