Budget 2024: Ombudsman body and more on Nirmala Sitharaman's to-do list for PLI scheme

Budget Expectations: The first major policy announcement, Union Budget, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA third term will happen on July 23 with experts looking for changes in Production-Linked Incentives (PLI) scheme to further expand the scope of manufacturing industry in the country.

"Government's focus should be to enable disbursements in a swift manner under existing and new PLI schemes. In many situations, disbursements are held up on account of disconnect on the manner of computation of incremental turnover. One such example is products with seasonal production which face a challenge on computation on a full year basis. Probably, setting up an ombudsman body where escalations or delays can be addressed in 30-60 days could help smoothen out the process," said Gunjan Prabhakaran, Partner & Leader, Indirect Tax, BDO India.

Read More: Budget 2024 date: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to present Union Budget in Lok Sabha on July 23


Commenting further on leakages that can be looked into in the Union Budget would be broadbasing the policy. "The products covered within each sector can be broadbased and the schemes can be extended. Further, the schemes should be extended to services like R&D and Engineering," noted Prabhakaran.

Additonally, to further improve the results of Modi government's PLI, there is a need for acquiring significant amount of data is required to be submitted and therefore there is a scope of easing out this process, commeted Prabhakaran.

For now, India is streamlining visa norms for expat workers of all companies in the 14 sectors under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said on Thursday. The move could ease the visa process for expats, including those from China employed in India.

Read More: Budget 2024: Will Budget remove the ‘killer’ angel for the sake of Indian startups?

The PLI scheme was announced in 2021 for 14 sectors, including telecommunication, white goods, textiles, manufacturing of medical devices, automobiles, speciality steel, food products, high-efficiency solar PV modules, advanced chemistry cell batteries, drones, and pharma, with an outlay of Rs 1.97 lakh crore.

In the last Budget presented by the Finance Minister, the allocation towards its flagship Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for financial year 2025 was hiked to Rs 6,200 crore, up 33 per cent from FY24's budgeted estimate of Rs 4,645 crore.