The budget does stand out for the kind of emphasis it lays on startups, capital flows, sunrise sectors, says Gopal Srinivasan, founder, chairman and managing director of TVS Capital Funds (TCF). In particular, he points to the measure announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman to provide a corpus of rupees one lakh crore with a fifty-year interest free loan. The corpus, the finance minister had pointed out, would “provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates. It is to encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains. In this context, she said, “we need to have programmes that combine the powers of our youth and technology,” Srinivasan points also to the new scheme, the minister announced, “for strengthening deep-tech technologies for defence purposes and expediting ‘atmanirbharta’.”
The second important point, which he feels, also stands out in the budget is the importance accorded to capital flows, especially encouraging the domestic capital flows.
The finance minister also made specific reference to a policy priority to ensure timely and adequate finances, relevant technologies and appropriate training for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) to ensure they grow and compete globally. “Orienting the regulatory environment to facilitate their growth will be an important element of this policy mix,” finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, adding that aligning with the ‘Panchamrit’ goals, the government would facilitate sustaining high and more resource-efficient economic growth. “This will work towards energy security in terms of availability, accessibility and affordability. For meeting the investment needs our Government will prepare the financial sector in terms of size, capacity, skills and regulatory framework,” the minister said.