Interim Budget 2019: Who Are The Real Winners?

With general elections around the corner, the Indian electronics industry was right in expecting a few positive announcements in the Interim Budget 2019, and it has not been disappointed in that respect. The startup and solar sector, however, are not too impressed.

- Baishakhi Dutta

As Finance Minister Piyush Goyal was presenting the Interim Budget 2019 on the first day of February, his announcements were greeted with a continuous thumping of desks in the Lok Sabha. The aim of this budget, he said, was to allocate resources to uplift the lower and lower middle economic strata, and also to boost business in India.

This year’s Interim Budget was a balanced call, one that the interim finance minister had to take to keep up with the political compulsions as well as the welfare of the country’s economy, ahead of the general elections. The Budget this year is viewed by many as ‘populist talk but a prudent walk’. The finance minister began his presentation of this year’s Budget by saying that India is now rid of policy paralysis, and followed up by giving some figures to showcase the government’s achievements.

The push for a digital economy

The Budget had some positive announcements to help accelerate India’s transition into a robust digital economy. Taking forward the Digital India programme, Goyal presented the concept of ‘digital villages’. He said that the government has set a target of building 100,000 digital villages in the next five years. The task of creating these villages will be taken up by the Common Service Centres (CSCs), which will first set up the digital infrastructure in the villages.