Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Smt.  Nirmala   Sitharaman, highlighting the mantra of of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Prayas’ in the Interim Budget 2024-25 laid in Parliament today, said that the country is proud of our youth scaling new heights in sports.

Youth in Sports

Highlighting the achievements of India in the Asian
Games, she said “The highest ever medal tally in Asian Games, and Asian Para Games in 2023 reflects a high confidence level”. In her Budget speech, the Union Minister also said that Chess prodigy and our Number-One ranked player Praggnanandhaa put up a stiff fight against the reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsson in 2023. Speaking of India’s success in Chess, she said “Today, India has over 80 chess grandmasters compared to little over 20 in 2010”.

Corpus for Tech Savy Youth

Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman while presenting the Budget proposed to establish a corpus of rupees one lakh crore with fifty- year interest free loan. The corpus will provide long term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates. She said that for our tech savvy youth, this will be a golden era and there is a need to have programmes that combine the powers of our youth and technology. Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman emphasised that the corpus will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in the sunrise domains.

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