AGARTALA, Feb 1 (TIWN): When Northeast state Tripura is suffering from highest commodity prices among all the 29 states of India due to state govt's zero control over the 'price tags', Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has announced today while placing the budget for 2018-19 at the Parliament, "Govt of India will invest Rs. 2000 crores to build up at least 23,000 rural haats to increase direct selling of Indian farmers". However, Jaitley also mentioned there will be talks among States and Centre via NITI Aayog regarding the proper implementation of the budget. "Agricultural corpus worth Rs 2000 crore will be set up. 470 APMCs have been connected to eNAM network, the rest to be connected by March 2018", added Jaitley. "Allocation for food processing has been doubled from Rs 700 crore to Rs 1400 crore. Allocation is being doubled to boost food processing; specialized agro-processing and financial institutions to be promoted by the Government. Cluster-model approach to be adopted for agricultural production," says Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Jaitley has also made a big announcement for farmers right at the start of Budget 2018, saying the MSP for crops will be 1.5 times the production cost.

He adds that the government’s focus will shift from Ease of Doing Business to Ease of Living for poorest of the poor. Breaking with tradition, Jaitley is delivering the speech both in Hindi and English.

This is the Narendra Modi government’s first post-GST and last pre-poll Budget and is expected to provide Income Tax and Corporate tax relief along with farm sops.

Jaitley’s fifth Union Budget is arguably his toughest yet as he seeks to address farm distress, create jobs and boost growth while sticking to fiscal prudence and negotiating a tricky GST twist. This Budget is being keenly watched to see what Arun Jaitley does to boost growth in Asia's third largest economy.