Budget 2024: AICTE chairman lauds Rs 1 lakh crore corpus for R&D with 50-year interest-free loan

NEW DELHI: All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) chairman TG Sitharam welcomed the Interim Budget 2024 announced by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and said that the Rs 1 lakh crore corpus for research and development will encourage youth in expediting and expand scope for research and start-ups.

According to the interim budget 2024 announcement made on February 1, AICTE has been allocated Rs 400 crore as against Rs 420 crore in the 2023-24 financial year.

Lauding the announcement for establishing a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore with 50-year interest-free loan, Sitharam said: "This will exponentially scale up the research, innovation and entrepreneurship landscape and help in establishing India as a global hub of research, innovation and start-ups.”

He said that the low or nil interest loans will certainly mark an exponential boom in the trajectory of the technology driven organisations. The move will also boost industry-academia collaboration.

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“AICTE is harnessing and encouraging Research and Innovation Culture through organising hackathons like Smart India Hackathon, conducting Institution's Innovation Council (IIC) regional meets, organizing Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship (IDE) Bootcamps etc. Moreover, to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the education sector AICTE launched 'Ministry of Education - AICTE Investor Network', a platform which aims to provide crucial financial support, mentoring, and strategic guidance to early-stage student or faculty-led start-ups,” he added.

Further, he said that the corpus investment in the IT industry will help address the Al skill crunch and bridge the gap effectively.