Union health budget betrays national health policy promise:Jan Swasthya Abhiyan

“Allocations for health remain inadequate at just 2% of the total budget, with decreased transfers to states and lowered priority for National Health Mission The 2017 National Health Policy had committed to “increase health expenditure by Government as a percentage of GDP, from the existing 1.15% to 2.5 % by 2025.”

Within this, the Centre’s share should have reached 1% of the GDP this year. However, this year’s Union health budget is a mere 0.27% of the GDP, just around one-fourth of the expected level according to the government’s own policy. Over the past five years, the spending by the Union government on Health has remained under 0.3% of the GDP,” according to the statement.

Activists said that the Union government’s spending on health as a percentage of GDP, which increased moderately during the COVID pandemic, has decreased post-pandemic.

“The Union government allocation on health in 2026-27 Union Budget was 1.3% less than what was actually spent in 2020-21, when we take into account the effect of increasing prices. This also means that as a percent of GDP, Union government allocation to health has declined drastically from 0.37% (2020-21 Actual Expenditure) to 0.27% (2026-27 Budget). The share of the health budget in the total Union Government budget has declined from 2.26% to 2.07% in this period,” the JSA statement added.