The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has recommended additional incentive rates to be included in the PLI schemes based on the number of jobs created. In an effort to attract investments and create employment, the CII believes that employment-intensive sectors such as leather and food processing should have an incentive scheme.
Chandrajit Banerjee, CII Director General, said that with the imperative to support jobs and create employment as the country recovers from the pandemic, the CII suggests that the Budget add job creation component to the incentive. “CII also recommends that more employment-intensive sectors be brought under the purview of the PLI schemes which will greatly encourage investments in these sectors,” he said. “The incentives could be based on the proposed number of jobs being created in the project, giving higher weightage to job creation in the PLI schemes.”
The industry body also highlighted a range of measures that could be taken up in the forthcoming Budget that would help jobs to gain traction as the pandemic impact is being felt across income classes. It recommended relief for workers hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in the rural areas – the outlay for MGNREGA to be enhanced considerably to support the rural poor. This, in turn, will also support consumption growth.
The CII highlighted Section 80JJAA of the Income Tax Act, which provides for benefits for new workers with less than a threshold income of wages of Rs 25,000 per month, should enhance the limit to encourage higher skilled jobs creation. It said on the job training should be extended to all sectors with industry associations as third-party agencies for scaling up apprenticeship. To reduce the compliance burden for MSMEs in hiring apprentices, CII called for a fund to be set up to build real-time information system as a platform to bridge information gaps between workers looking for work and MSMEs looking for workers.
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It also suggested that exports of labor-intensive goods can be boosted with special economic zones, coastal zones and industrial parks with benefits that are WTO compatible.
