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Informist, Wednesday, Jul 31, 2024

--Fin secy: Job creation most important, challenging thing to do

--Fin Secy: Job creation initiative direct attack on unemployment 

--Fin Secy: Time will tell how measures to boost employment perform 

--Fin secy: Moving clearly in direction of tax simplification 

--Fin secy: Facing problem of inadequately skilled workforce 

--Fin secy: Expect big cos to sincerely take up govt's internship plan 

--Fin secy: Need to design public schemes that are fraud proof 

--Fin secy: States must collaborate on industrial training institutes

 

MUMBAI – Job creation was the most important and the most challenging thing for the government while preparing the Budget for 2024-25 (Apr-Mar), Finance Secretary T.V. Somanathan said. The Budget announced a host of schemes focussing on employment generation and skilling, including providing internship opportunities at the top 500 companies and employment-linked incentives. 

 

"Time will tell how the measures to boost employment have performed," Somanathan said at an event organised by Business Standard today.

 

Somanathan urged the big companies to take up the government's internship programme very seriously. In the Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a comprehensive scheme for providing internship opportunities for 10 mln youth in five years in the top 500 companies. 

 

"People graduating from IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) or kids of government employees, are not included in this internship programme. We want these companies to hire people from such a bracket that they would not generally hire from," Somanathan said.

 

Presenting the Budget, Sitharaman said the scheme will provide exposure for 12 months to real-life business environment, varied professions, and employment opportunities. The interns will get an internship allowance of 5,000 rupees per month and a one-time assistance of 6,000 rupees. The companies will be expected to bear the training cost and 10% of the internship cost from their corporate social responsibility funds.

 

Somanathan said there are a lot of challenges in hiring people because they are not skilled enough to do the job. He said states need to collaborate with the Centre to set up more industrial training institutes. "We will only roll out such schemes if the state is actively participating in it," he said.

 

The finance secretary said that the government is not keen on supporting schemes that are prone to leakages because of corruption or fraud. "We are quite conscious of the fact that we don't want this to be bureaucratised and become an obstacle to what we want them to do and what we want them to have," Somanathan said.

 

He also said the government was clearly moving in the direction of tax simplification, but tracking the incomes of professionals such as doctors and lawyers remains a challenge.  End

 

Reported by Kshipra Petkar and Kabir Sharma

Edited by Saji George Titus

 

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