New Delhi (NVI): Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today began pre-Budget consultations with different stakeholders by meeting groups from digital economy, fintech and start-ups.
During the meeting, many speakers suggested giving tax sops to start-ups and nurturing them in the country.
Sitharaman is expected to present the Budget for 2020-21 on February 1.
The main areas of discussion during the meeting included data issues such as use of big data technology, phenomena by analysing large data sets, use of big data technology for SME sector and unleashing the power of big data for public governance, an official relase said.
Other issues which dominated the discussion 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.
The representatives of digital economy, fintech and start-ups shared their views and suggestions regarding big data, incentives for encouraging setting up of data centres, fiscal incentives for data localisation and incentives for pushing digital penetration in rural areas, the release said.
They also presented their views with regard to corporate guarantee to start-ups for competing with other nations, rationalisation of MAT tax rate, tax exemption for start-up units, creation of specific agency for looking after cross-border financial crimes.
Suggestions about increasing women employment (gender dividend in skill development), training youth in skill development along with international internships and incentivising Research & Development (R&D) within India were also shared by the stakeholders.
While the experts suggested improvements in their respective fields, they also gave a variety of solutions to the sector specific problems.
