Budget 2024: Rs 1 Lakh Crore Interest-Free Corpus For R&D In Sunrise Sectors
The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her interim budget speech, announced a Rs 1 lakh crore corpus, with interest-free loans for 50 years, for long-term financing of technological research.
The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates. That will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in so-called sunrise domains.
The fund is aimed at India's tech-savvy youth, the Finance Minister said.
“PM Shastri gave the slogan of ‘Jai Jawaan Jai Kisaan’. PM Vajpayee made that ‘Jai Jawaan Jai Kisaan Jai Vigyaan’. PM Modi has furthered that to ‘Jai Jawaan Jai Kisaan Jai Vigyaan and Jai Anusandhaan’, as innovation is the foundation of development,” she said.
“For our tech-savvy youth, this will be a golden era. We need to have programmes that combine the powers of our youth and technology."
The details of the Rs 1 lakh crore fund to sunrise sectors aren't finalised yet, Finance Secretary TV Somanathan told NDTV Profit during an exclusive chat after the budget.
"The intent is to give long-term debt capital with concessional/nil rate of interest to projects that are for profit but have a long gestation period or have difficulty in getting funding," he said.
A new scheme will also be launched for strengthening deep-tech technologies for defence purposes and expediting ‘atmanirbharta’.
