Union Budget 2024: Govt To Promote Vegetable Supply Chain Startups

SUMMARY

We will promote startups for vegetable supply chains, including for connection and storage and marketing, said FM Sitharaman

The DPI for the agriculture sector will be rolled out after a year-long pilot, under which the Centre had asked states and UTs to digitise the process of area enumeration of crops at the field level

The Budget speech also saw the FM propose development of multiple other DPI applications at “population scale for productivity gains and business opportunities”

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday (July 13) said that the government will promote startups across the vegetable supply chain to spur the agritech sector.

“We will promote farmer producer organisations, cooperatives and startups for vegetable supply chains, including for connection and storage and marketing, digital public infrastructure for agriculture,” said FM Sitharaman.

She also said that the digital public infrastructure (DPI) for the agriculture sector will be rolled out after a year-long pilot. Going forward this fiscal, crop survey will be undertaken using the digital public infrastructure (DPI) in 400 districts in the ongoing Kharif season, added Sitharaman.

Via the DPI, details of 6 Cr farmers and their land parcels will be collected and the said farmers will be brought under the ambit of the farm and land registry. In addition, the DPI will be utilised to offer Kisan credit cards to farmers.

Notably, a pilot of the agri DPI was launched last year, when the Centre asked states and union territories (UTs) to digitise the process of area enumeration of crops at the field level.

The FM also proposed development of multiple other DPI applications at “population scale for productivity gains, business opportunities, and innovation by the private sector”. These new public digital goods will cater to sectors such as credit, ecommerce, education, health, law and justice, logistics, MSME, services delivery, and urban governance, she added.

Till date, the Centre has operationalised a slew of DPIs including Aadhaar, e-KYC, UPI, Bharat QR, account aggregator, and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

Meanwhile, the Budget also saw multiple other announcements for Indian startups, including the abolition of angel tax, reduction of the tax deducted at source (TDS) for ecommerce platforms to 0.1% from 1% earlier, and an additional cut in basic customs duty (BCD) rates on several mobile phone parts.

It is pertinent to note that the full Budget follows an interim Budget that was presented in February this year.

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