Jaitley promises tax incentives for start-ups in Budget

Imparting a momentum to the Startup India initiative, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised special sops for start-up enterprises in the forthcoming national budget.

Addressing entrepreneurs at the opening session of ‘Start-up India’ event held in the Indian capital on January 16, Mr Jaitley said the campaign will help change conventions while the government will only be a facilitator for start-ups.

“PM’s own idea was that start-ups need to be encouraged. Both the banking system and government will make the resources available. We are fully conscious of the adverse situation in which we are struggling to keep respectable growth rates in Indian economy,” Mr Jaitley said. “We ostensibly broke away from “license raj” in 1991, conceived with idea that government will decide which businesses can run. Our effort over last few years was to restrict role of states in policy domain,” he added.

The world universally recognizes India as probably the fastest growing major economy, but we have our own challenges to work on, Mr Jaitley said.

With 4,200 startups, India ranks 3rd globally in number of startups after the US and China. Out of $18 billion pumped into Indian startups between 2010-15, $9 billion came in 2015 alone. Tech hubs like Bangalore and Hyderabad dominate the startup space, due to a stronger business ecosystem. However, the ideas that are coming from even the remotest parts of India have grown in the last couple of years and the startups are no longer confined to the metropolitan cities alone.

“We are fully conscious of the adverse situation in which we are struggling to keep respectable growth rates in Indian economy,” Mr Jaitley said. He added that it was the Prime Minister’s own idea to encourage the start-ups need. “Both the banking system and government will make the resources available,” Mr Jaitley added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the event officially in the evening of January 16. “Will join the programme to commence the #StartupIndia movement this evening. Looking forward to interacting with start-up entrepreneurs,” Mr Modi tweeted.

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