I have made and witnessed very many announcements in Vigyan Bhavan, but today is very different.
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He assured the startups that both the banking system and the government will make the resources available to them.
Here are some of the key highlights from his session.
Saying the country could take “limited satisfaction” from having become the fastest growing big economy, Jaitley said it was faced with many challenges like in agriculture, two successive weak monsoons and low investment by a private sector which had overborrowed putting banks’ finances under great strain.
“We as the government will have to see that we remove the clutter so that you can focus on your core business and not compliances”, Sitharaman said. But that break was partial. It was so because, who would be funded, land permissions, foreign investment proposal, environmental clearances, had the invisible role of the state. There are no files that have to be pushed.
Its role is now one of a campaigner, it’s role is now one of an enabler.
“Startup India is a program where the government will be at an arm’s length to entrepreneurs”, he said. With the world more inter-connected today through technology, more problems have risen and there are generally multiple crises in different parts of the world, which have lasting global impact.
No one can predict what the emerging challenges of the world will be in the next few years/months.
The advantages for India were that it has a booming services sector and that foreign investment was still coming in, he said.
Under these circumstances, the government had to explore new areas and it is among those newer areas that it conceived of the MUDRA scheme. “Earlier they were exploited by money lenders”. “In four to five months, nearly 1.73 crore entrepreneurs have availed loans through MUDRA scheme”, he said. “Once the start-up movement picks up, it will be the eventual freedom from the state”, he said, adding that the government’s role would be that of a facilitator. He said “We are targeting women and SC/ST segments because these segments have not thrown enough entrepreneurs”.
By funding trading or manufacturing establishment of this segment, nearly 3,00,000 new entrepreneurs over the next two years will be created, he said.
It was PM’s original idea that this was where startups needed to be created.
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“However, it was expected that the proposed policy would provide access to capital and a complementary IPR (intellectual property rights) regime, which would allow entrepreneurs to grow and prosper”, FICCI said citing the American diplomat.
