Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi addressed a webinar on implementation of Budget 2023-24 which has stood to be a youth-centric budget.
The budget focus on Apprenticeship training as it is one of the most sustainable model of skill development. The Hon’ble Prime Minister said, the new opportunities outlined in the budget will seamlessly integrate the ‘World of Education', the ‘World of Skills’ and the ‘World of Work’. And a milestone initiative towards creation of a more vibrant and participative apprenticeship training ecosystem in the country is the support that will be extended to 47 lakh youth in 3 years through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) under the pan-India National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS).

The key announcements in the Union Budget related to Apprenticeship are as follows and we seek ideas and suggestions from the public and other stakeholders on the same:

• NAPS-2 is a DBT scheme with the Government of India (GoI) support going directly to the bank account of apprentices instead of reimbursement to the establishment as in case of earlier version of NAPS. Thus, the Government will directly pay the apprentices 25% of the stipend payable up to Rs. 1,500 per apprentice per month on confirming the payment of establishment part of the stipend. The entire process of DBT will be hosted on the Apprenticeship Portal (www.apprenticeshipindia.gov.in) and there will be limited manual intervention execution of the scheme.

• One of the major changes proposed in the new scheme as compared to the earlier version is the introduction of DBT. The earlier scheme of NAPS was not supported by the feature of DBT which is transparent and a quick process. It will also overcome the delay in the reimbursement process to the establishments which was the major challenge in the previous version of NAPS. DBT offers comprehensive advantages such as identifying the leakages in financial disbursement under NAPS, formalizing the offline modes of stipend payment system, moving away from long delays from claiming reimbursements and most critically promotion of apprenticeship among youth thereby creating increased demand amongst candidate groups to choose apprenticeship as a skilling vehicle.

• The scheme has suitably addressed the concerns of industry by offering flexibility in curriculum development and imparting training under Optional Trades which are industry driven and dynamic in nature whereas, Designated Trades are more structured and follow a standardized approach to train the apprentices.

Last date of submission – 31st March 2023