Finance Minister Sitharaman approves a relief package for the COVID-19 relief
The Finance Minister gave Rs 23,220 crore of extra funding to set up children and pediatric care at hospitals to equip healthcare infrastructure to deal with any emergency occurring due to the COVID-19 wave slamming children.
This was notified by Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar after the Cabinet meeting. 
As part of the package to help the COVID-19 pandemic-hit economy, Sitharaman had on Monday declared Rs 1.5 lakh crore of extra credit for small and medium businesses, additional funds for the healthcare sector, loans to tourism agencies and guides, and waiver of visa fees for foreign tourists together with previously declared Rs 93,869-crore spending on giving free foodgrains to the poor till November and add further 4,775 crore fertilizer subsidy, the stimulus package, which is mainly made up of government guarantee to banks and microfinance institutions for loans they expand to COVID-19-hit sectors, totalled up to Rs 6.29 lakh crore.
The Finance Minister gave Rs 23,220 crore of further funding to set up children and pediatric care at hospitals to prepare healthcare infrastructure to deal with any emergency arising due to the COVID-19 wave hitting children.
Further, to incentivize job creation, the government committed to spending the employer and employee’s percentage to provident fund (PF) for all new recruitments done till March 2022. Lately, the government spent Rs 902 crore for 21.42 lakh beneficiaries of 79,577 establishments.
With the tourism sector being knocked hard by the pandemic, the minister had declared financial assistance to over 11,000 registered tourists, guides, travel, and tourism stakeholders, in addition to free one-month tourist visas to the first five lakh tourists.
Other announcements included the following Rs 19,041 crore to provide broadband internet cover to all village panchayats, an addition of tenure of a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for large-scale electronics manufacturing by a year, and Rs 88,000 crore of insurance cover for goods exporters.
The central government has declared the support measures as states start lifting restrictions after new coronavirus infections showed a decrease.
Two announcements formulated by Sitharaman regarding the additional subsidy of Rs 14,775 crore for DAP & PP & K fertilizers and the addition of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKY)? free food grains from May to November 2021, were lately approved by the Cabinet.
