The parliament's budget session has started. On the first day of the Budget Session Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented The Economic Survey 2017-18 on the floor of the house. Here are some of the highlights of the Economic Survey 2017-18.

Overview of State of Economy: Last year in the month of July major taxation reform called GST came into force. With a policy change of such scale, scope, and complexity, the transition encountered challenges of policy, law, and information technology systems, which especially affected the informal sector. Expeditious responses followed to rationalize and reduce rates, and simplify compliance burdens. The other issue economy faced was 'Twin Balance Sheet (TBS)' issue. With the help of IBC (Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code) and NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) the work is going on to solve this issue. This action helped the exports to uplift and the economy to recover in the second half of the year. The survey also states this will allow the GDP to grow at 7-7.5% in the year 2018 against 6.75% growth of 2017. The survey sets the agenda for the next year and for the medium term. The next year's agenda includes stablizing the GST, completing the TBS actions, privatizing Air India, and staving off threats to macro-economic stability while the medium term agenda focuses on three areas - Employment: finding good jobs for the young and burgeoning workforce, especially for women. Education: creating an educated and healthy labor force. Agriculture: raising farm productivity while strengthening agricultural resilience.

What survey says about Inflation and Fiscal Deficit: The average CPI inflation for the first nine mine months was averaged at 3.2%. The survey estimates the CPI inflation to reach 3.7% for the year as whole and GDP deflector by 3.6%. However CSO forecasted GDP deflector to grow at 2.8%. The three major factors which upswung inflation are: Rising global oil prices, unseasonal increases in the prices of fruits and vegetables, and the 7th Pay Commission housing rent allowances.

The current account deficit has widened in year 2017-18 and the survey expects to average about 1.5-2% of the GDP for the whole year. The current account deficit further can be split into a manufacturing trade deficit, an oil and gold deficit, a services deficit, and a remittances deficit. In the first half of 2017-18, the oil and gold balance has improved but this has been offset by a higher trade deficit and a reduced services surplus. The fiscal deficit has reached 112% of the total for the year in first eight months itself which is much higher than 89% norm. This happened largely because of the short fall in non tax revenue.

Impact of Crude Oil Price: Increase in price of crude oil in international markets has adversely affected Indian economy. The survey says “In the last three fiscal years, India experienced a positive terms of trade shock. But in the first three quarters of 2017-18, oil prices have been about 16 percent greater in dollar terms than in the previous year. It is estimated that a $10 per barrel increase in the price of oil reduces growth by 0.2-0.3 percentage points, increases WPI inflation by about 1.7 percentage points and worsens the CAD by about $9-10 billion dollars,”

Feminism of Agriculture Sector: The Survey has observed that the growing rural to urban migration by men has led to ‘feminisation’ of the agriculture sector. There has been a substantial rise in the number of women in multiple roles as cultivators, entrepreneurs, and labourers. The Survey has suggested this change should be taken advantage of by providing women farmers with enhanced access to key resources such as land, water, credit, technology and training. The entitlements of women farmers will be the key to improve agriculture productivity. The differential access of women to resources like land, credit, water, seeds and markets needs to be addressed the survey suggests.

Increase in Indirect Taxpayers: The preliminary analysis of GST depicts, there has been a fifty percent increase in the number of indirect taxpayers; and a large increase in voluntary registrations, especially by small enterprises that buy from large enterprises and want to avail themselves of input tax credits. According to the Economic Survey, there were 9.8 million unique GST registrants, an increase by 3.4 million compared to the previous tax regime. The survey tells that the formal non-agricultural payroll is much greater than what we have believed. The survey states "India’s formal sector non-farm payroll is substantially greater than currently believed. Formality defined in terms of social security provision yields an estimate of formal sector payroll of about 31 percent of the nonagricultural work force; formality defined in terms of being part of the GST net suggests a formal sector payroll of 53 percent."

India’s discontinuation of old high-value currency notes in November 2016 has helped in widening the tax net. According to the Survey, 1.8 million new individual tax payers have been added since demonetisation.

The survey also advises the tax officers to be more choosy regarding the cases.

“Tax departments in India have gone in for contesting against in several tax disputes but also with a low success rate which is below 30%. About 66% of pending cases accounted for only 1.8% (of value at stake)” said a statement from the finance ministry, quoting the Survey. Only 0.2% of cases accounted for 56% of the value at stake, said the survey.

Saving Slowdown: The Survey indicated that growth in savings did not bring economic growth but the growth in investments did. Raising investments is more important than raising savings.

Climate Change & Agriculture: The survey depicts the adverse effect of extreme weather on agricultural yields. Survey says "the impact of temperature and rainfall is felt only in the extreme; that is, when temperatures are much higher, rainfall significantly lower, and the number of “dry days” greater, than normal." The survey adds "these impacts are significantly more adverse in unirrigated areas (and hence rainfed crops) compared to irrigated areas (and hence cereals)." The survey estimates that climate change could reduce annual agricultural incomes in the range of 15 percent to 18 percent on average, and up to 20 percent to 25 percent for unirrigated areas." To minimize the effect of climate change on agriculture the survey suggests to extend irrigation via efficient drip and sprinkler technologies (realizing “more crop for every drop”), and replacing untargeted subsidies in power and fertilizer by direct income support.

Gender and Son Meta-Preference: While India has made notable progress in women development, the preference for son is resulting to a skewed sex ratio, the Survey has pointed out.The survey says "Over the last 10-15 years, India’s performance improved on 14 out of 17 indicators of women’s agency, attitudes, and outcomes. On seven of them, the improvement has been such that India’s situation is comparable to that of a cohort of countries after accounting for levels of development. Encouragingly, gender outcomes exhibit a convergence pattern, improving with wealth to a greater extent in India than in similar countries so that even where it is lagging it can expect to catch up over time. However, on several other indicators, notably employment, use of reversible contraception, and son preference, India has some distance to traverse because development has not proved to be an antidote. Within India, there is significant heterogeneity, with the North-Eastern states (a model for the rest of the country) consistently out-performing others and not because they are richer; hinterland states are lagging behind but the surprise is that some southern states do less well than their development levels would suggest. The challenge of gender is long-standing, probably going back millennia, so all stakeholders are collectively responsible for its resolution. India must confront the societal preference, even meta-preference for a son, which appears inoculated to development. The skewed sex ratio in favor of males led to the identification of “missing” women. But there may be a meta-preference manifesting itself in fertility stopping rules contingent on the sex of the last child, which notionally creates “unwanted” girls, estimated at about 21 million. "