Union Budget underscores role of digital, tech in development: Nasscom

Amid the growing fears of slowdown and global recession, the Union Budget is growth-oriented, boosting allocations across sectors, according to IT industry body Nasscom.

The budget offers a playing ground for the startup community as well, and has highlighted that India is the third largest ecosystem for startups, Nasscom said in a statement.

"Amidst the growing fear of slowdown and global recession, the Union Budget 2023 is growth-oriented and committed budget, that has boosted allocations across sectors," the IT industry association said.

India is walking the talk on becoming a global digital economy, enhancing competitive advantage with focus and investments across key intervention areas.

"Calling out the Indian economy as tech-driven, knowledge-based economy, the budget focuses on three key transformational trends that will help build India its competitive advantage - digital transformation, energy transformation, and supply chain resilience," said Nasscom, the apex body for the USD 227 billion dollar IT-BPM industry in India.

It added that budget underscored India's plan to become an engine for global growth and deploy digital as leading India's development.

"It touched upon all the critical aspects required to position India as a leader in terms of digital offerings, along with a focus on talent and sustainability," Nasscom said.

According to Nasscom, the creation of 5G labs will further help in opening newer avenues and opportunities, scaling up new business models and employment prospects.

From Centres of Excellence for AI to National Data Governance Policy, Union Budget drives digital agenda, it said.

The Union Budget on Wednesday outlined several initiatives to drive India's technology agenda and boost digital infrastructure, including new centres of excellence for artificial intelligence, National Data Governance Policy, and Entity DigiLocker.

Presenting the Union Budget for 2023-24, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asserted that India's rising global profile is because of several accomplishments such as unique world-class digital public infrastructure, entailing Aadhaar, Co-Win and UPI.

Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, spoke of tech infrastructure and digital ecosystem as well as measures in new-age areas of Artificial Intelligence and 5G.