HIglights of Union Budget 2009 Presented To Indian Parliament

The finance minister of India on Monday outlined plans to speed infrastructure development and unveiled increased spending for farmers and the poor in the first budget since the Congress-led government was re-elected convincingly in May.

Following are the highlights from the budget speech:

* "The first challenge is to return the GDP growth rate of 9 percent per annum at the earliest."

* "The second challenge is to deepen and broaden the agenda for inclusive development."

* "There are signs of revival in domestic industry and foreign investors have also returned to Indian markets in the last couple of months."

* "It is possible that the two worst quarters since the global financial meltdown in September 2008 are behind us."

* "While the global financial condition has shown improvement over the recent month, uncertainty relating to the revival of the global economy remains. We cannot, therefore, afford to drop our guard.

* "We have to continue our efforts to provide further stimulus to the economy."

* 2008/09 GDP growth seen at 6.7 pct.

* To ensure more flexibility to India Infrastructure Finance Co Ltd

* Have asked states to remove bottlenecks on infrastrcture projects

* Allocates 5 bln rupees for Mumbai flood project

* Liquified natural gas infrastructure in the country to be expanded

* To raise allocation for National Highways Development by 23 percent

* To raise allocation for urban poor schemes to 39.73 billion rupees in 2009/10

* Targeting agriculture credit of 3.25 trillion rupees

* To pay additional interest subvention of 1 percent to farmers who pay short-term farm loans on schedule

* To extend agriculture debt waiver by 6 months

* Plans to move towards nutrient-based subsidy regime for fertilisers

* To offer direct subsidy to farmers

* To extend interest subvention to exporters in 7 sectors till March 2010

* To give relief to exporters hit by global financial crisis

* To allocate 40 billion rupees to encourage lending to small firms

* To set aside 1 billion rupees for banking services in unbanked areas

* To allocate of 391 billion rupees for rural jobs programme in 2009/10 , 144 percent more than in 2008/09

* To raise allocation for rural roads scheme by 59 pct in 2009/10

* To raise allocation to Bharat Nirman infrastructure programme by 45 percent

* To allocate 70 billion rupees for rural electrification scheme

* To allocate 20 billion rupees for rural housing under National Housing Bank

* To set up 2 handloom clusters, 1 power loom cluster

($1=48.17 rupees)