Budget 2024: Sitharaman announces Rs 1 lakh crore corpus for R&D push in the country

In what signals a huge push for Research & Development in the country, the government on Thursday announced a Rs 1 lakh crore corpus to promote technological innovation in sunrise sectors.

“For our tech savvy youth, this will be a golden era,” union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her interim Budget speech.

“A corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore will be established with a 50 year interest free loan provided. The corpus will provide long term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates.”

She said this will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains while underscoring the need to have programmes that combine the powers of India’s youth and technology.

Hailing the government’s moto of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan and Jai Anusandhan.” “New Age #Tech and data is changing the lives of people and businesses, enabling new economic opportunities and facilitating provisions of high-quality services,” said Sitharaman.

In addition to this, Sitharaman said a new scheme will be launched for strengthening deep tech technologies for defense purposes in a bid to further expedite ‘atmanirbharta.’

India’s share of R&D in overall GDP is much lower compared to developed countries and this has been a long-standing ask of industry body Nasscom.

The FM went on to say that new age technologies and data were changing the lives of people and businesses and also enabling new economic opportunities while facilitating high quality services at affordable prices for all including those at the bottom of the pyramid.

“Opportunities for India at the global level are expanding,” she said. “India is showing solutions through innovation and entrepreneurship of its people.”