Budget 2015: Aim to turn youth from job seekers to job creators, says Jaitley
Mumbai: Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley in the Union Budget 2015 announced a slew of skill development and employment schemes. The main aim of the government is to create entrepreneurship among Indian youth.
The initiative of creating the local entrepreneurship includes agricultural development and boosting up education for the youth. In order to support the agricultural sector, the Finance Minister also proposed to allocate 25,000 crore in 2015 to rural development funds.
‘Our commitment to farmers run deep, an ambitious soil health card has been introduced to improve soil fertility’, added Arun Jaitley focusing on the development of agricultural sector. He also said that the government is also committed towards ensuring employment through MNREGA and a total amount of Rs 34,699 crore has been allocated for this project.
The newly introduced employment plans aim at making more workers eligible for minimum wages and increase in the number of new start-ups.The Finance Minister also proposed to allocate Rs 1,000 crore fund for tech start ups, entrepreneurs. "We are now seeing a growing interest in start ups. Experimenting in cutting edge technologies, creating value out of ideas, initiatives and creating them into scalable enterprises and businesses is at the core of our strategies," he said while presenting the Budget for 2015-16 in the Lok Sabha.
The government is also creating a mechanism known as Self Employment and Talent Utilisation (SETU) to be techno-financial incubation and facilitation programme to support all aspects of start up business and other self employment activities particularly in the technology driven areas.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley proposed appointing an expert committee to prepare a draft legislation for obtaining regulatory clearances expeditiously. The minister observed it took years to get permissions to start a project. "I intend to appoint an expert committee for the purpose to examine the possibility and prepare a draft legislation where the need for multiple prior permissions can be replaced with a pre-existing regulatory mechanism," he said, while presenting the Budget.
Arun Jaitley said that investors spent a large amount of time and resources in getting multiple permissions. The government aims towards ease of doing business, he said adding he has recently launched an E-biz portal which integrates 14 regulatory permissions at one source. He added that good states may soon join this platform. "However if we really want to create jobs, we have to make India an investment destination which permits the start of business in accordance with publicly stated guidelines and criterias," Jaitley said.
India has been ranked 142 among the 189 countries in the latest World Bank report, falling two places from last year's ranking. Lower rank is one of the reasons to get less foreign direct investment into the country. The government is taking steps to bring India into the top 50 ranks. It has taken several steps including issuance of checklist with specific timelines for processing applications filed by foreign investors and launch of a single registration Labour Identification Number for labour related compliances.
According to the Economic Survey 2014-15, India has emerged as the world's fourth largest hub for start-ups with over 3,100 of them, driven by 'hyper growth' in technology and software. products in the country.
