Amidst the growing fear of slowdown and global recession, the Union Budget 2023 is growth-oriented and committed budget, that has boosted allocations across sectors. India today is walking the talk on becoming a global digital economy, enhancing India’s competitive advantage with focus and investments across key intervention areas. Calling out the Indian economy as tech-driven, knowledge-based economy, the budget focuses on three key transformational trends that will help build India its competitive advantage – Digital Transformation, Energy Transformation, and Supply Chain Resilience. The budget outlines India’s plan to become an engine for global growth and deploy digital as leading India’s development.
The budget called out the role of technology in almost all the major announcements– from building DPI for agriculture to the use of tech for accelerating the skilling momentum to growing e-courts to powering green growth and sustainable mobility. The creation of 5G labs will further help in opening newer avenues and opportunities, scaling up new business models and employment prospects.
Some of the key areas where tech will play a pivotal role as highlighted in the Union Budget 2023 are:
⦁ Leading India’s digital transformation from the front and the role of DPIs in ensuring inclusive growth at scale. The financial inclusion numbers 7,400 crore digital payments of Rs 126 lakh crore through UPI in 2022, as highlighted by the Finance Minister clearly lays out India’s leadership on people centric innovation and impact
⦁ There has been tremendous commitment to Capex. In the next fiscal, capital investment outlay will be raised by 33% to ₹ 10 lakh crore, 3.3% of the GDP in 2023-2024 fiscal. This is important to build physical infrastructure as it builds up the digital infrastructure.
⦁ The government also reiterated its commitment to green growth. Focus on green fuel, green energy, green farming, green mobility, green buildings, green equipment, and policies for efficient energy use across various economic sectors is indeed the need of the hour. Allocating 35000 crores towards achieving net zero goals and energy transition is commendable.
⦁ The government focus on not just building COEs to drive development of AI in India, but also to focus on making AI and data work for India, will be critical in building the core design principles of AI innovation for a diverse nation like India.
⦁ The proposal to unlock the full potential of digilocker, to simply the kyc regime and introduce other enabling measures for innovation and digital adoption are in line with the trend we have seen over the last few years and is welcome.
Highlighting that India is the third largest ecosystem for startups, the budget offers a playing ground for the startup community as well. Our recommendations to carry-forward losses from 7 years to 10 years for eligible start-ups and to extend the tax holiday regime to new start-ups has been made a part of the budget proposals. We will continue to work and engage with the government on suggestions that are not part of the budget announcements and also to implement many of the policies announced for enhanced ease of doing business.
Budget 2023 could undoubtedly be termed as a blueprint for India @100. It touched upon all the critical aspects required to position India as a leader in terms of digital offerings, along with a focus on talent and sustainability. It is bold and strategic, with a clear focus on growth and development.
