The government is believed to be mulling over a new tax-saving scheme to garner 'idle money' lying with households and elsewhere in the system, primarily to fund building infrastructure.
The scheme could offer tax benefits for investments up to Rs 500,000 and be instrumental in partly meeting the country's infrastructure funding needs, which have been pegged at as high as $750 billion, sources said.
The scheme could serve multiple purposes including giving additional tax benefits to the public, channelising the huge amount of money lying idle in saving accounts or with households for productive means, that too without adding to the fiscal deficit, the sources noted.
The government has already announced a borrowing programme of over Rs 300,000 crore (Rs 3 trillion) for the current fiscal and any further increase could result in liquidity available for the private sector drying up and also add to the ballooning fiscal deficit, they added.
There have been demands from various sectors for additional tax benefits for citizens and also tapping alternative resources for meeting the government's spending needs.