Centre announces Rs 1 lakh cr corpus with 50-yr, interest free loans for tech-savvy youth

New Delhi, Feb 1 (IANS) The government on Thursday announced a Rs 1 lakh crore corpus for youth for long-term financing and refinancing that will help young entrepreneurs innovate and grow at scale in the sunrise industries.

Presenting the Interim Budget in the Lok Sabha, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that this corpus will provide "long-term low or nil interest rates so that the youth can innovate at scale".

"As innovation is the foundation of development, for our tech-savvy youth, this will be a golden era. A corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore with 50-year interest free loans will provide long term financing at low or nil interest rates for the private sector to scale up research in sunrise sectors," she said.

The priority for the government is to provide ample training and empower the Indian MSMEs to compete globally and to meet their needs, the government will help the MSMEs innovate and grow at scale, she added.

The Finance Minister said that a new scheme will be launched to strengthen deep-tech sector for defence purposes.

The full-fledged budget will be presented by the new government that comes to power after the elections.