Although the last Budget gave some fillip to skills training sector by announcing budget for Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), the total long-term budgetary requirement for skills still needs to take into account the following realities:
1. That Skill India Mission is probably the backbone of all other missions such as Make in India, Smart City, Digital India, Startup and Entrepreneurship Missions
2. That only 20%-30% of students out of total beneficiaries are able to pay the full fees on their own (considering an average Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 per student) and remaining students need to be subsidised for skill trainings, at least for a few years to come. Also, Skills Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy has estimated that for achieving the overall skill target till 2022, India needs Rs 6 lakh crores as the total budget. As compared to Rs 1500 crores allocated to MSDE during last budget, the expectation of skills training sector would be to see the continuation of commitment towards Skill India Mission from the government, extending of PMKVY with a larger mandate and also allocation of budgets other than PMKVY for catalyzing more PPP efforts in skill development.
Service Tax should be waived off for the Business Correspondents commission as the BC channel is trying to establish as a strong channel for financial inclusion, whether urban or rural. Once we see some acceptance of financial services in the target areas, then gradually a service tax policy can be introduced. But at this stage in the financial inclusion scheme, this tax should be waived off immediately. To ensure that the Business Correspondent channel is financially viability additional B2C services like Provident Fund, insurance, etc. should be provided through the banking kiosks. Siddharth Chaturvedi (Director, AISECT)
Financial literacy should be a key focus in the years to come. With many of the citizens getting a bank account a clear focus on financial literacy should be provided. Though banks and institutions like NABARD have their own financial literacy programmes, financial literacy should be pushed through the Business Correspondent channel in rural India. Interoperability should also be pushed wherein people can use a banking kiosk of any bank for transactions even if they are customers of some other bank. Introducing Aadhar Enabled Payment System across all banks will help in interoperability and will also instill confidence in the customers owing to the use of one single technology by all banks. Abhishek Pandit (Director – Business Services, AISECT)
( Views expressed by the authors are personal and not that of CNN-IBN or IBNLive)
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