New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who is likely to present her second Budget for the Modi 2.0 government on February 1, has started her pre-Budget consultations with different stakeholder groups.
In the first set of meeting, issues discussed include use of big data technology for small and medium enterprises and unleashing its power for public governance. The other issues included digital infrastructure and role of government, regulation of digital economy especially in privacy, financial regulation, ease of doing business environment for start-ups, infrastructure gaps for Digital India and taxation issues.
Representatives of the digital economy, fintech and start-ups shared their views on big data, incentives for encouraging setting up of data centres, fiscal incentives for data localisation, incentives for pushing digital penetration in rural areas, corporate guarantee to start-ups for competing with other nations, rationalisation of minimum alternate tax rate and tax exemption for start-up units.
In the second meeting, main areas of discussion included increasing credit off-take from banks, governance changes in public sector banks with special focus on P J Nayak Committee recommendations, creation of a well-functioning bond markets, benefits of Partial Credit Guarantee Scheme, alternative investment funds in real estate sector and measures for alleviating stress among non-banking finance companies.
