Presenting the Interim Budget 2024-25 in Parliament on Thursday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the Central government has proposed to create a corpus of Rs one lakh crore to boost private investment in sunrise technologies.

‘’This will mark a golden era for our tech savvy youth,’’ she pointed out.

The Finance Minister said the corpus will be established with a 50-year interest free loan. It will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates.

“This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains. We need to have programmes that combine the powers of our youth and technology,” the Finance Minister said.

Pointing out that new age technologies and data are changing the lives of people and businesses, the Finance Minister said that they were also enabling new economic opportunities and facilitating provision of high-quality services at affordable prices for all, including those at ‘bottom of the pyramid’.

Stressing that Research and Innovation will catalyse India’s growth, generate employment and lead to development, Sitharaman said that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gave the slogan of “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan” and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee made that “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan”.

“Prime Minister Modi has furthered that to “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan and Jai Anusandhan”, as innovation is the foundation of development,” she said.