The Interim Budget 2024-25 by the Honourable FM Nirmala Sitaraman has given a resounding boost to the development agenda of the government against global headwinds with importance given to working towards becoming a resilient Indian economy. The focus on infrastructure capex deployment is a welcome move and we appreciate the announced spending of INR 11.11 Lakh Crores, which would be the highest ever outlay from the GDP at 3.4%. The announcements of strengthening the logistics systems through dedicated three corridors for freight railway and increased safety through conversion to Vande Bharat is a welcome move.
The dedication of the government towards innovation with an INR 1 lakh crore corpus with a 50-year low or zero interest loan for innovations by the youth in Deep Tech for defence would help fulfil our self-reliance goals. The recently announced India-Middle East-Europe corridor is going to be game-changer for our economy and the FM stressing on this in her speech has given confidence to the industry.
The promise of strengthening the energy sector through a mandate on CBG for transport (PNG) and domestic purposes (CNG piped gas connections), viability gap funding of offshore wind energy for an initial capacity of 1 gigawatt, and the announcement to support rooftop solarization for 1 crore households is appreciated by us.
We appreciate the focus to bolster our oil seed economy as this would be a boost to the Agri economy. We agree that the focussed investments in aquaculture and mariculture is the best manner to progress towards the Blue Economy 2.0. Tourism becoming a prominent feature with rating systems, additional services, improved facilities and government support are great moves by the government.
Overall, we welcome these initiatives by the government in this interim budget for 2024-24.
T R Kesavan
President, MCCI
