Employment generation in the midst of a global meltdown will be the central idea of the Interim Budget that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will present on February 16 just ahead of the general elections.

Among other proposals to give the job market a leg-up, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s Interim Budget speech is likely to see larger fund allocations to skill development programmes in the rural sector and subsidies for training schemes for one member of rural Below Poverty Line (BPL) families (in which adult members of the family earn less than Rs 10 a day). Under this scheme, the government will provide a subsidy to companies for training on condition that the member of the BPL family is given a job once he completes the programme.

A pilot skill development project is already in place in some states. To roll it out fully, as the government intends, the cost of the project over the next eight years would be Rs 2,26,400 crore or an average of Rs 28,300 crore a year. The budgetary allocation for the pilot project was Rs 5,650 crore.

Top government sources have made it clear that the Interim Budget will not be a routine statement of accounts for immediate government expenses. Instead, the Union government will use it as an opportunity to announce a slew of “pro-people policy measures” just ahead of general elections.

Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said there was no “constitutional bar” to announcing policy measures in an Interim Budget but added that he couldn’t say what the government was planning.

Source: Business-standard UPA To Focus On Rural Jobs In Interim Budget