NEW DELHI: As the nation awaits the Union Budget for 2024-25, the Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs chaired a meeting with the eighth Pre-Budget Consultation with experts from the employment and skill development sectors to take suggestions for the forthcoming General Budget 2024-25, in New Delhi, on Tuesday.
Leading names in the sector of skilling and employment such as Anshuman Magazine, Suchita Dutta, Sarvesh Agrawal, and Gayatri Vasudevan were present in the meeting.
After the meeting, Anshuman Magazine, former Chairman of CII Northern Region and CEO-India, South East Asia, Middle East and Africa, Global Commercial Real Estate Services, said that the experts conveyed the need for skilled people. He said, “Basically the discussion was centered on skilling and employment generation. People from different sectors tabled their suggestions during the meeting. Considering the huge number of graduates coming out from the colleges, the experts suggested how can we make them job ready.”
Outlining the the specifics of the discussions he said the ministry asked where can we provide incentives to the employees for improving their skilling. He said the Ministry also invited suggestions on making youth the job ready.
During the meeting, Suchitra Dutta, the Executive Director, of the Indian Staffing Federation suggested considering the GST rate for employment service at 5 per cent allowing more companies to consider adopting formal employment practices.
The federation further added that the employment must be considered under merit services. Recognising the increasing role of social security it demanded the ambit of employment formalisation be expanded for domestic workers as well.
The federation demanded a dedicated focus of the government for greater inclusion of women in the workforce and labour codes for the ease of doing business and formalization of employment.
Speaking to ANI, the founder and CEO of Internshala, Sarvesh Agrawal said,” Representing the startups I suggested the government to set up the foreign language schools and colleges to leverage global opportunities in the countries such as Japan, Germany etc.”
As part of the pre-budget deliberations, the finance ministry is meeting with the stakeholders of the economy ahead of the presentation of the union budget.
(ANI)