More incentives in Budget for start-ups: Jaitley

Promising more start-up friendly measures in the Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the initiative that aims to create over 3 lakh entrepreneurs in the next two years is a final break from the licence raj.

“Start-up initiative will be a programme in which the government will only be at arm’s length. The government will essentially be a facilitator with very little role in day-to-day business,” Jaitley said while inaugurating the start-up India conference here.

He said, India has already worked upon an entrepreneur-friendly taxation regime but there were some steps which required legislative provisions and that could come as part of the Finance Bill when the Budget is presented.

He assured start-ups that more banks would be lending to them and also promised to make government resources available for them hassle-free.

Start-Up India, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 15, aims to create jobs in the country at a time when the conventional private sector is facing several challenges, Jaitley said.

“The government has limited potential to create jobs within the governmental system. The private sector’s expansion itself has thrown up challenges because they have overstretched themselves,” he said.

Jaitley said the government will soon launch “Stand-up India” scheme under which bank branches will lend to entrepreneurs from the SC/ST community and also women.

“Stand-Up India would be separately launched. It is a programme which envisages women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs belonging to the SC/STs to get funding from banks.

These were the segments which were not throwing up entrepreneurs,” he said. “Each bank branch, public sector or private sector, would actually adopt one in the SC/ST category and one in the women category. So they will adopt two such entrepreneurs and fund them to set up establishments,” he said.

“By funding trading or manufacturing establishment of this segment, almost 3,00,000 new entrepreneurs over the next two years will be created,” Jaitley added.