IAMAI launds government\'s move to boost digital economy

The Internet & Mobile Association of India [IAMAI] has welcomed the budgetary announcements made by Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley today. Reacting to the budget, Dr. Subho Ray, President, IAMAI said “We are briskly moving towards a better regime for startups and the budget underscores this move after the first set of provision supporting entrepreneurship.”

The association has welcomed the proposal to reduce taxes on Technical Services from 25% to 10% with the aim of encouraging tech startups. Also, the workforce eligibility criteria reduction to avail of exemption is a welcome move. The above incentive would go a long way in employment generation and fostering entrepreneurship in digital business.

The association has also welcomed the setting up of Atal Innovation Mission with an initial fund of Rs 150 crore for research and development. This platform will foster a culture of innovation, research and development. The association has also welcomed move to expand the NoFN network to be implemented by the states on a reimbursement basis. This is a great step to speed up implementation.

The twin move of setting up of IIMs and IITs and the Students Financial Aid will support the increased manpower requirement for the ICT sector from a larger catchment area. This will certainly boost employment generation.

The association has also welcomed the establishment of SETU (Self-Employment and Talent Utilisation). This will help in the ease of doing business in India and will be able to create jobs and hundreds of billion dollars in value.

The proposal to utilise the vast Postal network with nearly 1,54,000 points of presence spread across the villages of the country is praiseworthy. The post offices will act as payment banks in addition to acting as courier and can boost ecommerce. With RuPay debit cards for all Jan Dhan transactions, it will, along-with some other technical announcements, would boost digital payments.

IAMAI has also welcomed the fact that the Finance Minister has reiterated his commitment to implement GST by next year. This would be beneficial to eCommerce companies. However, a small negative in line with GST implementation is that the service tax has been increased to 14 per cent.