Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced an outlay of Rs 4,795.24 crore for the Digital India Programme as part of the Budget 2023-24 on Wednesday.

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Amitabh Kant, Former CEO of NITI Aayog believes that a huge focus on urbanisation and travel and tourism is a necessary and welcome push. However, the real highlight, according to him, is the push to go digital across the board.

“Digitisation and going green is going to put India on an accelerated path of growth,” he said.

The former NITI Aayog chief believes that the technology transformation story of this Budget in terms of energy, battery storage will augur well for the next spurt of India's growth story.

"In terms of the whole range of new areas of growth, electric mobility, green hydrogen, all the sunrise areas of growth which will enable India to technologically pole-vault in many ways – that is the defining feature of this Budget,” he explained.

This was a 37 percent decrease from last year's actual outlay of Rs 7,603.5 crore — the Centre had allocated Rs 10,676.18 crore to the initiative.

Also Read | Budget 2023 :| FM has over-delivered on the personal income tax front, says Tarun Bajaj

Last year, MeitY had received around Rs 10,676,18 crore for Digital India in the Budget, a 67.13 percent jump from Rs 6,388 crores the previous financial year. This was eventually revised to Rs 6703.5 crore.

This was especially significant considering the total budget allocation for MeitY stood at Rs 14,300 crore for 2022-23 as against Rs 9,581.25 crore in 2021-22.

The FM pointed out that the Budget 2023 is also aligning itself to India’s aspirations of leading the G20 as the presidency of G20 is with India.

“This is a Budget truly for a new India. It is heavily focused on capital expenditure,” he added.

Also Read | Budget 2022: Capex stepped up 35% to Rs 7.50 lakh crore in FY23; Rs 1 lakh crore assistance announced for states

FM during her Budget speech announced an increase in capital expenditure for FY24 to Rs 10 lakh crore from last Budget’s Rs 7.50 lakh crore and would be 3.3 percent of the GDP. For FY22, the capital expenditure was Rs 5.54 lakh crore.

Sitharaman has allocated Rs 1 lakh crore capital expenditure assistance to states in FY23 to catalyse overall investment in the economy. This is a big jump from Rs 15,000 crore capex assistance in the previous financial year.

Catch all the latest live updates on the 2023-24 Union Budget here.