Budget 2024: FM Sitharaman focuses on growth, employment —a look at 6 key measures to boost job creation

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday presented the pre-election Budget, which is technically a vote on account and popularly termed an Interim Budget.

To enhance economic growth and generate jobs, the government has increased the capital expenditure (capex) by 11.1 per cent in the current budget.

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The finance minister announced several measures for different sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture, tourism, solar, fisheries, research and development (R&D) that will create employment opportunities and boost income.

The interim Budget will take care of the financial needs of the intervening period until a government is formed after the Lok Sabha polls after which a full budget will be presented by the new government in July.

A look at different sectors for which Sitharaman announced measures to boost job growth--

Rooftop solarisation 

Through rooftop solarisation, one crore households will be enabled to obtain up to 300 units of free electricity every month.

Through this scheme, entrepreneurship opportunities for a large number of vendors for supply and installation will be created. Youth with technical skills in manufacturing, installation and maintenance will get job opportunities.

Agriculture 

The government will increase efforts for value addition in the agricultural sector and to boost farmers’ income.

“For ensuring faster growth of the sector, our government will further promote private and public investment in post-harvest activities including aggregation, modern storage, efficient supply chains, primary and secondary processing and marketing and branding,” she said.

Fisheries

Around 55 lakh employment opportunities will be generated soon as the government aims to step up the implementation of Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY).

Research and Innovation 

With a focus on India’s tech-savvy youth, the government will establish a corpus of ₹1 lakh crore with “fifty-year interest free loan”. The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates. This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains. 

Infrastructure

The tripling of the capital expenditure outlay in the past 4 years has resulted in a huge multiplier impact on economic growth and employment creation. The outlay for the next year has been increased by 11.1 per cent to ₹11.11 lakh crore, this would be 3.4 per cent of the GDP.

Tourism 

To address the emerging fervour for domestic tourism, projects for port connectivity, tourism infrastructure, and amenities will be taken up on Indian islands, including Lakshadweep. This will help in generating employment.