Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a slew of policy measures to catalyse the country’s technology and startup ecosystem, particularly in the sunrise sectors, while presenting the Union Budget 2024.
Boosting EV Infra: FM said the government will expand and strengthen the e-vehicle ecosystem by supporting manufacturing and charging infrastructure. She added that higher adoption of e-buses for public transport networks will be encourage through the payment security mechanism.
R&D Corpus: The FM said the government will establish a corpus of Rs. 1 Lakh Crore with a 50-year interest-free loan to aid the growth of India’s tech-savvy youth. The corpus will enable long-term financing or refinancing with long tenures at low or nil interest rates. This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation in sunrise domains.
Right from the Budget announcement last year, the government has been attempting to make hardware and electronic manufacturing in India a tempting proposition for global companies.
The government has revived the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) to lure companies in peripheral industries for semiconductor manufacturing to set up shop in the country.
In 2023, the government expeditiously advanced its agenda through the ISM.
Deep Tech Focus: A new scheme will be launched to strenghten deeptech for the defence sector, FM told the Parliament.
Last year, the government floated a draft national deeptech startup policy proposing changes across nine themes including access to funding, strengthening the intellectual property regime, sustaining deeptech startups, and enabling shared infrastructure and resource sharing.
Tax Benefits: The FM said the certain tax benefits to startups and investments made by sovereign wealth or pension funds, as tax exemption on certain income of some IFSC units, will be expiring on Mar 31 2024 and to provide continuity in taxation, they have been extended till Mar 31 2025.