The Government proposes to create a corpus of Rupees One Lakh Crore to boost private investment in sunrise technologies.

While presenting the Interim Budget 2024-25 in Parliament today, the Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman said that this will mark a golden era for our tech savvy youth.

The corpus will be established with fifty-year interest free loan. It will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates.

“This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains. We need to have programmes that combine the powers of our youth and technology,” the Finance Minister said.

Smt. Sitharaman also proposed a new scheme to be launched for strengthening deep-tech technologies for defence purposes and expediting ‘atmanirbharta’.  

Technological Changes

Pointing out that new age technologies and data are changing the lives of people and businesses, the Finance Minister said that they are also enabling new economic opportunities and facilitating provision of high-quality services at affordable prices for all, including those at ‘bottom of the pyramid’.

Stating that opportunities for India at the global level are expanding, Smt. Sitharaman said, “India is showing solutions through innovation and entrepreneurship of its people.”

Research & Innovation

Stressing that Research and Innovation will catalyze India’s growth, generate employment and lead to development, Smt. Sitharaman said that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gave the slogan of “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan” and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee made that “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan”.

“Prime Minister Modi has furthered that to “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan and Jai Anusandhan”, as innovation is the foundation of development,” she said.

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YKB/NB/PK