Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented Budget on 01.02.2023. It was her fifth budget and as expected the budget 2023 was focused on infrastructure development. India’s rising global profile is because of several accomplishments like unique world class digital public infrastructure for example Aadhaar, Co-Win and UPI. Budget-2023 announcement made by Finance Minister further establish that BJP Government want to continue riding growth on digital India track. Finance Minister in her budget 2023 speech announced various new schemes for taking the India’s digital infra to next level. I have highlighted few of them.
- Digital Payment In 2022 shows increase of 76 per cent in transactions and 91 per cent in value. Fiscal support for this digital public infrastructure will continue in 2023-24.
- In order to promote the concept of Electronic Gold, it is proposed to exclude the conversion of physical form of gold into EGR (Electronic Gold Receipt) from the definition of ‘transfer’ under Income Tax Act 1961.
- To promote digital economy, threshold turnover limits for availing the income tax presumptive taxation under section 44AD and 44ADA has been increased, if cash receipts are not more than 5%.
- An ‘Entity DigiLocker’ will be set up for use by MSMEs, large business and charitable trusts. This will be towards storing and sharing documents online securely, whenever needed, with various authorities, regulators, banks and other business entities.
- For the business establishments required to have a Permanent Account Number (PAN), the PAN will be used as the common identifier for all digital systems of specified government agencies. This will bring ease of doing business.
- For countries looking for digital continuity solutions, we will facilitate setting up of their Data Embassies in GIFT IFSC.
- Digital Public Infrastructure for Agriculture will be built to enable inclusive, farmer-centric solutions through relevant information services for crop planning and health, improved access to farm inputs, credit, and insurance, help for crop estimation, market intelligence, and support for growth of agri-tech industry and start-ups.
- National Digital Library for Children and Adolescents will be set-up for facilitating availability of quality books across geographies, languages, genres and levels, and device agnostic accessibility. States will be encouraged to set up physical libraries for them at panchayat and ward levels.
- ‘Bharat Shared Repository of Inscriptions’ will be set up in a digital epigraphy museum, with digitization of one lakh ancient inscriptions in the first stage.
- The KYC process will be simplified adopting a ‘risk-based’ instead of ‘one size fits all’ approach. The financial sector regulators will also be encouraged to have a KYC system fully amenable to meet the needs of Digital India.
- To enable more Fintech innovative services, the scope of documents available in DigiLocker for individuals will be expanded.
- One hundred labs for developing applications using 5G services will be set up in engineering institutions to develop among others, applications such as smart classrooms, precision farming, intelligent transport systems, and health care applications.
- The digital ecosystem for skilling will be further expanded with the launch of a unified Skill India Digital platform for enabling demand-based formal skilling, linking with employers including MSMEs, and facilitating access to entrepreneurship schemes.
Finance minister has also focused on all other infrastructure areas like Road, Medical, Colleges, Railway, logistics, ports but budget 2023 was more focused on digital Infrastructure.
Author Bio
