India Budget Allocation For Health

Economics of health plays a major role in improving quality of labour input as well as quality of life and in India the main reason for subservient quality are poor health and malnutrition.

As compared to global data, currently India has one of the lowest spending on the healthcare. The current spending of India is 1.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but our Prime Minister has promised to double its public health by spending 2.5% of GDP by 2025.

Union Finance Minister “Nirmala Sitharaman” had announced that RS 62,659.12 crore expenses for health sector in the year 2019-20. This health outlay shows an increase of around 19% over the year 2018-19 fiscal when it was only RS 52,800 crore. The Finance Minister announced an allocation of RS 69,000 crore for the healthcare sector in the year 2020-21.

 Under Ayushman Bharat, government also decided to initiate a programme to setup 1, 50, 000 wellness and health centres by 2022. India’s share in health expenditure of GDP and in public spending on health is low as compared to developed countries. The contribution to total health expenditure comes from two sectors i.e. public sector and private sector. Day by day the population will increase and the government will face challenge in providing adequate health facilities which requires huge amount of budget allocation.