India’s central banking institution, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its latest ‘Union Budget 2018-19: An Assessment’ study has said that the country’s social sector expenditure, primarily constituting health and education continues to remain woefully below peers, in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The RBI concluded this on the basis of analysis of 17 countries – India, Korea, Latvia, Iceland, Israel, Ireland, Estonia, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy and Belgium.
As per the study, India spent lowest on social sectors at 7.5% of GDP in 2016, while Belgium spent highest at 29.0% of GDP in 2016, followed by Italy 28.9% and Greece 27.0%. The study report noted that the expenditure on health and education together is budgeted to grow by 4.6% as per the 2018-19 Budget, on the back of the National Health Protection Scheme under the 'Ayushman Bharat' programme and the education system reforms.
The RBI study further said that capital expenditure which is growth inducing has been proposed to be raised by 9.9% in 2018-19 over the revised estimates (RE) of 2017-18, marking a decline of 3.0% when compared with Budget Estimate (BE) of 2017-18. Besides, it found that Capital Outlay (capital expenditure excluding loans and advances) is budgeted to increase by 12.6% in 2018-19, a marginal rise over BE but sharply higher than 1.6% in 2017-18 (RE) and Capital outlay on major infrastructure is estimated to grow by a robust 23.0% in 2018-19 (BE) - as against a decline of 2.1% in 2017-18 (RE) - led by the railways, roads and bridges.
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