Budget banks on medium, small and micro enterprises for job creation

The Union Budget has given a big thrust to medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs) to boost employment and economic growth. A sum of Rs3,794 crore has been provided for giving credit support, capital and interest subsidy and for innovations.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley said the MUDRA Yojana launched in April 2015 has led to the sanction of Rs4,60,000 crore in credit through 103.8 million MUDRA loans.

Of these, he said, 76 per cent of loan accounts are of women and more than 50 per cent belong to SCs, STs and OBCs. It is proposed to set a target of Rs3,00,000 crore for lending under MUDRA for 2018-19 after having successfully exceeded the targets in all previous years.

Reiterating that creating job opportunities is at the core of government policies, the finance minister cited an independent study as showing that 7 million formal jobs will be created this year.

To carry forward the momentum created by the measures taken during the last 3 years to boost employment generation, Jaitley announced that the government will contribute 12 per cent of the wages of the new employees in the EPF for all the sectors for next three years. He proposed to make amendments in the Employees Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 to reduce women employees' contribution to 8 per cent for first three years of their employment against existing rate of 12 per cent or 10 per cent with no change in employers' contribution.

The Budget proposed an outlay of Rs7,148 crore for the textile sector in 2018-19 as against Rs6,000 crore in 2016-17.