This being an interim budget, much was not expected as far as new announcements and taxation changes. However, for iSPIRT and the Product ecosystem of the country, it is heartening to know that some of our initiatives and thoughts as a ‘think-tank’ have become central to thinking of Government at the leadership level. The following are important to note
The Finance Minister mentioned that “DPI (digital public infrastructure), a new factor of production in the 21st century, is instrumental in the formalization of the economy”. She also mentioned the G-20 successes. ISPIRT pioneered the concept of DPI and played a vital role in rolling out many DPIs and covering the DPI advocacy as a knowledge partner to the Digital Economy Working Group.
The second announcement that can hugely impact product nation-building is the funding of Research. FM announced that, “A corpus of rupees one lakh crore will be established with a fifty-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.” Also, the thought of generating employment and empowering youth was central to this announcement. We hope that post-election a robust mechanism can be developed to implement this and capitalize on nation-building. This announcement is also important from iSPIRT’s thought process where a continuous push under its “Vishwamitra” initiative is being out on funding R&D in multiple ways at scale.
Also notable is, a new scheme for deep-tech technologies for defence aiming at expediting ‘Aatma-nirbharta’ is on the anvil.
Although nothing new has been announced, Start-ups are central to the Government’s thinking for economic development.
Overall it is a futuristic thinking budget speech with an emphasis on deep-tech, research funding, Capital inflows and startups along with capex and infrastructure.
Though there was a mention of ‘Reform, Perform, and Transform’ as a guiding principle, the budget did not touch upon any specific reform or intent on Ease of Doing business. We wish this becomes an important agenda item along with funding research for our businesses to succeed in global competition.