Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, on Tuesday, announced a new internship scheme that will offer on-the-job training to one crore youngsters in the next five years. According to sources, the scheme would provide internships across top 500 companies, and every intern would get a stipend of Rs. 5,000 per month. The cost of training would be borne by the companies; they would have to spend 10 percent of that expenditure from their CSR funds.
According to Section 135 of Companies Act 2013, every company having a net worth of rupees five hundred crores or more, or turnover of rupees one thousand crores or more or net profit of rupees five crore or more during any financial year shall spend at least two percent of the average net profit of the three immediately preceding financial years on CSR activities.
Sitharaman said in her speech that an ambitious target to generate employment opportunities for about 4.1 crore youth in the next five years with an outlay of Rs 2 lakh crore. Besides, she announced Rs 1.48 crore for skill development programs to train 20 lakh youth and shared plans for the upgradation of 1,000 industrial training institutes.
Sitharaman further proposed a one-time wage incentive for first-time employees across all sectors, to be delivered through DBT. The Finance Minister pointed out that this Budget basically focused on employment, skill development, MSMEs, and relief to the middle class.
