NEW DELHI: The health budget crossed two per cent of the GDP in 2022 against 1.6 per cent in the previous year, according to the Economic Survey of India released on Tuesday.
It, however, quoted the 15th Finance Commission and the National Health Policy, 2017, to suggest that the public health expenditure of the Centre and states together should be increased progressively to reach 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2025.
Highlighting that the Covid-19 virus posed an unprecedented challenge to the country, the survey, which was tabled on Tuesday in the parliament, said it was tackled with an agile approach.
It said over two years since the pandemic was declared, the government has taken various fiscal and social measures to balance the revival of the economy and deal with increasing caseloads. “These included ramping up physical and digital health infrastructure, enhanced training of health professionals and continuing with the mass vaccination drive,” said the Survey, which Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented.
Noting that “India may have won a major battle” as in the last few months, the Covid-19 caseload has subsided significantly, it described CoWIN as a successful digital story to tell as the administration of more than 220 crores of Covid-19 vaccine doses was made possible because of the robust digital infrastructure of Co-WIN.
The Survey also said that India's domestic pharmaceutical market is estimated to reach USD 130 billion by 2030, and the pharma industry has sustained its growth momentum after the pandemic.
Also, pharmaceutical exports achieved a healthy growth of 24 per cent in 2021, driven by Covid-19-induced demand for critical drugs and other supplies made to over 150 countries.
The Survey said the National Health Policy 2017 envisages as its goal the attainment of the highest possible level of health and well-being for all at all ages through a preventive and promotive healthcare orientation in all developmental policies and universal access to good quality healthcare services without anyone having to face financial hardship as a consequence.
“This would be achieved through increasing access, improving quality, and lowering the cost of healthcare delivery.”
It added that keeping this in mind the "Central and State Governments’ budgeted expenditure on the health sector reached 2.1 per cent of GDP in 2023 and 2.2 per cent in 2022, against 1.6 per cent in 2021."
The share of expenditure on health in the total spending on social services has increased from 21 per cent in 2018-19 to 26 per cent in 2022-23.
It also said that the government has been able to augment rural health infrastructure, see a rise in the number of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel and listed how health-related indicators such as institutional births, immunisation and coverage of health insurance, have witnessed an uptrend in the past eight years.
The social security expenditure on health, which includes the social health insurance programme, government-financed health insurance schemes, and medical reimbursements made to government employees, has increased from 6 per cent in the financial year 2014 to 9.6 per cent in the financial year 2019.
It noted that this is a significant increase which shows that the citizens are better equipped and provided with healthcare at their doorstep, making it more accessible.
Due to several such steps, Out-of-Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) as a percentage of total health expenditure has declined substantially from 64.2 per cent in 2014 to 48.2 per cent in 2019.