Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her first budget of
third NDA government made strong pitch for infrastructure development, job
creation and energy transition amongst several new initiatives she announced
today. The budget is aimed towards building a robust roadmap for ‘Viksit
Bharat’, for which sustained efforts are to be made on the number of priorities
that include productivity & resilience in agriculture, employment &
skilling, boosting domestic manufacturing, energy security etc.
“The proposal to pay special attention to MSMEs and
manufacturing, particularly labor-intensive manufacturing through a package of
support measures is commendable”, said Mr. Kamal Nanavaty, President, Chemical
& Petrochemical Manufacturers’ Association. This package covers financing,
regulatory changes, and technology support for MSMEs so that they can grow and
compete globally.
“The budget proposal to set up a Critical Mineral Mission
along with to bring out a policy document on appropriate energy transition
pathways would encourage Indian industry to contribute in the mission of just
energy transition and security with an aim to realise the nation’s “net zero”
goal by 2070”, Mr. Nanavaty further emphasised.
The Critical Mineral Mission would facilitate domestic
production, recycling of critical minerals, and overseas acquisition of
critical mineral assets. Its mandate will include technology development,
skilled workforce, extended producer responsibility framework, and a suitable
financing mechanism. While thrust would be on developing domestic production
capacity of critical minerals, but parallelly the budget proposes to fully
exempt customs duties on 25 critical minerals and reduce BCD on two of them. This
will provide a major fillip to the processing and refining of such minerals and
help secure their availability for these strategic and important sectors.
The budget has several other visionary initiatives such as
employment-linked incentive, incentivizing States for implementation of their
Business Reforms Action Plans and digitalization, promoting private sector
investment in infrastructure through viability gap funding, would all give a
big boost to domestic manufacturing through FDI and domestic investment.
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