The Corporate Affairs Ministry (MCA) on Friday began consultations with industry on the Budget 2024 proposal to offer internships in top 500 companies to 1 crore youth over five years.
The two-hour long consultation meeting, held in the Capital, was chaired by MCA Secretary Manoj Govil and saw participation of over hundred members from Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) besides top MCA officials, sources said.
The internship scheme — a voluntary scheme — is part of the Prime Minister’s package of five schemes announced in recent Budget 2024 to facilitate employment, skilling and other opportunities for 4.1 crore youth over a 5-year period with a central outlay of ₹2 lakh crore.
MCA is spearheading the internship scheme and in partnership with CII looking to finalise the contours of the scheme. It will be available in top five hundred companies by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spend.
At today’s meeting, several industry representatives suggested that the scope of the internship scheme should be widened so as to cover top thousand companies by CSR spend, sources said. More than hundred CII members attended the consultation meeting, they said. There was even a suggestion from India Inc representatives that government must bring top 1,000 companies under the purview of this scheme.
Working on rules
MCA will follow the consultations in Delhi with similar meetings with industry representatives at metro cities such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Chennai, it is learnt. Post these meetings, MCA will finalise the rules for the internship scheme, sources added.
Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in her Budget speech said that as many as 1 crore youth will gain exposure as interns for 12 months in real time business environment, varied professions and employment opportunities.
As per the scheme, each intern will get an internship allowance of ₹5,000 per month along with one-time assistance of ₹6,000.
Companies will be expected to bear the training cost and 10 per cent of the internship cost from their CSR funds. This would mean each company would have to fork out ₹500 per intern and this entire money would be tax deductible towards CSR spend, sources said. The remaining ₹4,500 per month will come to each intern from government via direct benefit transfer.