Govt may announce measures in Budget to strengthen startup ecosystem

The government is expected to announce in the forthcoming Budget steps to further strengthen the startup ecosystem in the country and address inverted duty issues in certain sectors to promote domestic manufacturing, official sources said.

Fiscal incentives under the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme to some more sectors are also likely to be announced in the Budget, which will be presented on February 1.

Besides, the government may consider providing funds to infrastructure projects approved by the Network Planning Group (NPG), constituted under the PM Gati Shakti initiative, they said.

On October 13 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Gati Shakti - National Master Plan aimed at developing integrated infrastructure to reduce logistics costs.

The NPG has representations from various connectivity infrastructure ministries/ departments involving their heads of network planning division for unified planning and integration of the proposals.

All these departments approach the NPG first for approval before making a DPR (detailed project report) at the planning stage.

Inverted duty structure refers to taxation of inputs at higher rates than finished products that results in build-up of credits and cascading costs.

The government has already taken a series of steps to promote startups in the country. Under the Startup India initiative, Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) scheme, Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) and Credit Guarantee Scheme for Startups (CGSS) are implemented to provide capital at various stages of the business cycle of a startup.

The government launched Startup India initiative in January 2016 with an intent to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and encouraging private investments in the startup ecosystem.

"The commerce and industry ministry has suggested steps to further promote ease of doing business for startups, one of the sources said.