Industry body CII on Sunday has pitched for additional incentive rates to be included in the production linked incentive schemes based on the number of jobs created.

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has suggested that employment-intensive sectors such as leather and food processing could be provided an incentive scheme to attract investments and create employment.

“With the imperative to support jobs and create new employment as the country recovers from the pandemic, CII suggests that the budget add a job-creation component to the incentive,” CII director-general Chandrajit Banerjee said

“CII also recommends that more employment-intensive sectors be brought under the purview of the PLI schemes which will greatly encourage investments in these sectors.”

The incentives could be based on the proposed number of jobs being created in the project, giving higher weightage to job creation in the PLI schemes, said the CII.

Apart from the PLI scheme for employment, CII brought out a range of measures that could be taken up in the forthcoming budget that would help jobs to gain traction as the pandemic impact is being felt across income classes.

To provide relief to workers hit by the pandemic in the rural areas, the chamber recommended that the outlay for MGNREGA be enhanced considerably to support the rural poor, which would also encourage consumption growth. HUL CMD Sanjiv Mehta offered a similar view.

It also suggested that Section 80JJAA of the Income Tax Act which provides for benefits for new workers with less than a threshold income of wages of Rs 25,000 per month should enhance the limit to encourage higher skilled jobs creation.

Moreover, the CII stated that “on the job” training should be extended to all sectors with industry associations as third-party agencies for scaling up apprenticeship.

To reduce the compliance burden for MSMEs in hiring apprentices, it said a fund could be set up to build a real-time information system as a platform to bridge information gaps between workers looking for work and MSMEs looking for workers.

The industry body recommended that exports of labour-intensive goods can be stepped up with special economic zones, coastal zones and industrial parks with benefits that are WTO compatible.