CHENNAI: Tech companies and startups have something to cheer about as the budget promised a fillip to research and development and continuity in tax incentives.
The interim budget has proposed to establish a corpus of Rs one lakh crore with 50-year interest-free loan. The corpus 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,” said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman. A new scheme will be launched for strengthening deep-tech technologies for defence purposes and expediting ‘atmanirbharta, she said.
Further, the tax benefits provided to start-ups and investments made by sovereign wealth or pension funds as well as tax exemption on certain income of some IFSC units were expiring on March 31, 2024. To provide continuity in taxation, the budget proposed to extend it till March 31, 2025.
Sitharaman also said that the Skill India Mission has trained 1.4 crore youth, upskilled and reskilled 54 lakh youth, and established 3000 new it is and PM Mudra Yojana has sanctioned 43 crore loans aggregating to Rs 22.5 lakh crore. Further, 30 crore Mudra Yojana loans have been given to women entrepreneurs. In STEM courses, girls and women constitute forty-three per cent of enrolment and helped in increasing participation of women in the workforce.
