Union Budget 2019: What's expensive and what's cheaper?

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her first Budget today. The minister made some significant announcements, including the sops for MSMEs, pension benefits for retail traders, plans to increase FDI in aviation and media, deduction on interest paid on electric vehicle loans and a proposal to issue Aadhaar cards to NRIs with Indian passports.

She also spoke at length about Indian transportation and student programmes. Sitharaman also announced a string of import duty hikes and exemptions resulting in an alteration in prices of multiple goods.

Here's a look at what has become more expensive and what has become cheaper:

Expensive

Gold, silver, platinum

Petrol, diesel

Cigarettes, smoking tobacco, snuff

Marble slabs

Cashew kernels

Palm stearin and other oils having 20% or more fatty acid

Floor cover of plastics, wall or ceiling coverings of plastics

Articles of plastic

Uncoated, lightweight paper

Printed books and manuals

Ceramic roofing tiles and ceramic flags and paving, hearth or wall tiles

Stainless steel products

Base metal fittings, mountings and similar articles suitable for furniture, doors, staircases, windows, blinds, hinge for auto mobiles

Indoor and outdoor unit of split system air conditioner

Charger and power adapter of CCTV camera, IP camera and DVR / NVR; Digital Video Recorder (DVR) and Network Video Recorder (NVR);  CCTV camera and IP camera

Loudspeaker

Optical fibres, optical fibre bundles and cables

Auto parts

Cheaper

Wool fibre, wool tops

Defence equipments

Certain medical devices

Cellular mobile phone parts including camera module, charger, adapter, lithium ion cell, as well as display module, set top box, compact camera module

Electric vehicle parts

All goods required for setting up of nuclear power plant

Hides, skins, leather, tanned and untanned of all sorts

Also read: Budget 2019: No tax relief for middle class, super rich to be taxed even more!

Also read: Budget 2019: Govt to levy 2% TDS on cash withdrawal exceeding Rs 1 crore annually