What Business Leaders have to say about Union Budget 2019

What Business Leaders have to say about Union Budget 2019
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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the 89th Union Budget on Friday in the Lok Sabha, emphasising the Indian government's vision to grow to a $5 trillion economy by 2025.

Here's a roundup of reactions from Indian business leaders on the 2019 Budget.

Sunny Nandwani, Founder and Managing Partner, Acuver Consulting

The Union Budget 2019 pointed towards ease of doing business and scale up SMBs through ASPIRE (an initiative to develop skilled entrepreneurs in agro rural industries) and SFURTI (an initiative to enable artisans to join the economic value chain). The government has also given a massive push to infrastructure through all forms of physical connectivity via PMGSY, Industrial corridors, dedicated freight corridors, etc., which will facilitate last-mile fulfilment of the retail industry. 
 

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With FM Nirmala Sitharaman, aspiring to lead India to a 5 trillion USD economy, looking forward for policies that will increase purchasing powers of the citizen. Retailers, in turn will require to go digital to meet this increasing demand in consumption. IT organization will help the retailers with the digitization process.

This budget also allocates Rs.400 crore towards higher-education institutions, which will help improve skills of our youth in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Robotics. This will further result in reduction in Academy-industry fitment. 

 

Siddarth Bharwani, VP – Brand & Marketing, JETKING

The Union Budget 2019 has been an education-friendly one with great emphasis laid on the reforming education policies and unlocking India’s potential to become an important educational hub in the world. The details of the new education policy announced by FM Nirmala Sitharaman will be one of the most awaited reforms from the budget announced today. With emphasis on the growth of the research and innovation in India, the government has announced an allocation of INR 400 crores towards strengthening the higher education system in India. This kind of support the government towards the education sector is truly heartening to see and is in line with India’s goal towards the 5 trillion economy.

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Additionally, focus has been laid on new age skills such as AI, IoT, Big Data and Robotics which are key demands in both national and international job markets. While the stepping stones to the importance of skill development in such fields have been laid, we are still awaiting further clarification on how this advanced skill development is to be achieved.

 

Shubika Bilkha, Partner, EdpowerU

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharam in her Budget 2019 speech re-emphasized the Government’s focus of driving India to become a 5 trillion economy in 5 years. She believed that the spirit of Asha (hope), Vishwas (trust) and Akansha (aspiration) fills the Country today, served as an encouragement to drive this proposed agenda ahead. Revisiting and sensitizing the youth to Gandhian values was discussed in this Budget, and it will be interesting to see the dissemination of these values to today’s youth in the context of the rapidly changing world that we live in. Massive and much-needed reforms to the education policy for higher education have been suggested to ensure greater autonomy, a focus on new age skill sets and outcome-based learning.
 

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In addition to building world ranked institutes, it is incumbent on the government to ensure a required shift in the mind-set towards education to move away from mere technical skillsets and gaining marks or grades towards more practically oriented workplace and employability focused skills (that constitute ~60% of workplace success). It is equally relevant to align these identified skillsets with the requirements of industry and global future skills research, to position Indian graduates at an advantage.

 

Akhil Shahani, Managing Director, The Shahani Group 

This is a forward thinking budget for the education sector. We would like to acknowledge government's move in the direction and are happy to see the implementation of much needed education reforms along with true globalisation of Indian education.

The standard operating procedure for startups will also encourage education entrepreneurs to start and scale up their initiatives. Encouraging foreign students to study in India will raise expectations of quality from local institutions and will benefit all students. The emphasis laid by the Government on allocation of Rs. 400 crores for innovation and research will help the institutions to focus on these areas and build world class education systems that could compete with foreign universities. Additionally, the significance given to skill enhancement will help the institutions to be tech-savvy and digital.