New Delhi: Speaking after the presentation of the Union Budget for the coming financial year by finance minister P Chidambaram, prime minister Manmohan Singh said the focus of the Union Budget 2007-08 was on education and healthcare and that his government was committed to increasing the spending on social infrastructure.

The emphasis, he said, was on improving access to social services and the provision of a social safety net. Education and healthcare were the primary imperatives as far as this budget was concerned, the PM said.

"We need to strengthen the impulses to expand investment in infrastructure," to finance which the government was examining the possibility of utilising a portion of the foreign exchange reserves and was discussing it with the Reserve Bank of India, Singh said.

He also said that the government planned to expand the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme from 200 to 330 districts, which was half the total number of districts in the country.

The budget also proposed a new life insurance scheme for landless workers, he said.

There was a need to improve skills, for which special emphasis was being given to secondary education.

Highlighting the need for vocationalisation of education, he said the government plans to expand the facilities available at the industrial training institutes (ITIs).

"The finance minister had mentioned the upgradation of 500 ITIs as centres of excellence and the modernisation of another 1,400 ITIs. The focus was on improving the skill level of our young people," the prime minister said.

Chidambaram''s budget has failed to cheer some of the government''s own allies, and the Opposition was predictably peeved as it felt nothing much had been done to contain rising prices.