Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Monday presented a Rs. 2819 crore deficit budget for the 2008-09 fiscal and announced a number of sops and projects to be undertaken by his government during the year. Mr. Gogoi also announced the introduction of gender budgeting in the State starting with 12 departments having schemes with 100 per cent earmarked for the benefit of women. The sops announced by Mr. Gogoi in his budget speech included interest relief of two per cent for all crop loans up to Rs. 20,000 sanctioned during the current fiscal, abolition of value added tax (VAT) on rice, pulses, flour, suji, gram powder, potato and onion, increasing the exemption limit for traders under VAT from an annual turnover of Rs. 2 lakh to Rs. 4 lakh, exempting them from payment of professional tax up to an annual turnover of Rs. 4 lakh and reduction of VAT on jute cloth, jute products and unbranded soya nuggets. There is also a VAT reduction from 12.5 per cent to 4 per cent on transformers. Mr. Gogoi, who holds the Finance portfolio, also proposed increasing the deduction from 50 paise a kilogram of tea to Re. 1 a kg of tea from the agricultural income towards agricultural income tax for tea exported through inland container depot at Amingaon here. He also proposed reduction in the rate of central sales tax sold through Gauahti Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) and hoped that tea buyers and sellers would respond to this step positively and continue to transact business through the transparent and efficient forum of GTAC. In order to partially compensate the loss of revenue due to the above tax cut proposal, Mr. Gogoi proposed an increase in tax on foreign liquor and country spirit from 24 per cent to 27 per cent and introduction of a cess at the rate of three per cent on the sale of tobacco products.