This budget proposes a series of measures to unleash the potential of our economy, Centres of Excellence for artificial intelligence for realising the vision of 'Make AI in India and Make AI Work for India'.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday laid down the vision for ‘Amritkaal’ which included “technology-driven and knowledge-based economy”. This includes some plans for pushing the envelope on artificial intelligence (AI) and enhancing data governance.

At the Budget 2023 in the parliament, the FM announced a series of measures intended to encourage innovation in AI. She said that three Centre of Excellence (CoE) for AI would be set up at top educational institutions.

In addition, Sitharaman said that leading industry players would partner in conducting interdisciplinary research, develop cutting edge applications and scalable problem solutions in the areas of agriculture, health and sustainable cities.

She said that the measures would “unleash the potential” of the Indian economy by manifesting an effective AI ecosystem and nurture quality human resources in the field.

Commenting on the development, Rajsri Rengan, Head of Banking and Payments, India and Philippines, FIS said, “The government has announced on establishing centres of excellence for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Innovative digital technologies like AI, and Machine Learning is a big step towards promoting financial inclusion in India, enabling industries across sectors to become accessible to a wider section of population. This will result in boosting service delivery and enable various sections of society to actively participate in financial ecosystems.”

Three Centres of Excellence for artificial intelligence will be set up in top educational institutions. Leading industry players will partner in conducting interdisciplinary research, develop cutting edge applications and scalable problem solutions in the areas of agriculture, health, sustainable cities

National Data Governance Policy

Sitharaman during the Budget 2023 address also said that National Data Governance Policy will be brough out in the present year to augment innovation and research by startups and academia. 

“This will enable access to anonymised data. The KYC process will be simplified, adopting a risk-based (approach) instead of one-size-fits-all approach. The financial sector regulators will also be encouraged to have a KYC system fully amenable to meet the needs of ‘Digital India’,” she said.

The FM also announced that a new solution for identity and address updating would be established.  This one-stop solution will be for reconciliation and updating of identity and address of individuals maintained by various government agencies, regulators, and regulated entities via the DigiLocker service and Aadhar as its foundational identity.

She said that PAN would be used as the common identifier for all digital systems of specified government agencies. “This will bring ease of doing business and it'll be facilitated through a legal mandate for updating the need for separate submission of same information to different government agencies,” the FM expalined.

Commenting on the announcement, Divam Sharma, founder at Green Portfolio, said “A one-stop solution for identity using Digilocker and Aadhar was needed for a long. We have seen huge documentation processes for every bank transaction, borrowing through loans, making investments, buying insurance and any large-value goods etc. This is a positive for BFSI companies.”

Sitharaman also said that the system of unified filing process would be set up.