The Finance Minister in his Budget Speech of 2013 proposed a scheme to encourage skill development for youth by providing monetary rewards for successful completion of approved training programs. Excerpts from the Finance Minister’s speech are presented below:

“A large number of youth must be motivated to voluntarily join skill development programmes. I propose to ask the National Skill Development Corporation to set the curriculum and standards for training in different skills. Any institution or body may offer training courses. At the end of the training, the candidate will be required to take a test conducted by authorized certification bodies. Upon passing the test, the candidate will be given a certificate as well as a monetary reward of an average of 10,000 per candidate. Skill-trained youth will give an enormous boost to employability and productivity. On the assumption that 10,00,000 youth can be motivated, I propose to set apart 1,000 Crores for this ambitious Scheme. I hope that this will be the trigger to extend skill development to all the youth of the country.”

Objectives
The objective of this Scheme is to encourage skill development for youth by providing monetary rewards for successful completion of approved training programs. Specifically, the Scheme aims to:

    •  Encourage standardization in the certification process and initiate a process of creating a registry of skills
    •  Increase productivity of the existing workforce and align the training and certification to the needs of the country.
   •  Provide Monetary Awards for Skill Certification to boost employability and productivity of youth by incentivizing them for skill  trainings.
   •  Reward candidates undergoing skill training by authorized institutions at an average monetary reward of INR 10,000 (Rupees Ten Thousand) per candidate.
    •  Benefit 10 lakh youth at an approximate total cost of INR 1,000 Crores.

Eligible Beneficiaries
In line with the objectives stated above, this Scheme is applicable to any candidate of Indian nationality who:
    •  Undergoes a skill development training in an eligible sector by an eligible training provider as defined above;
    •  Is certified during the span of one year from the date of launch of the scheme by approved assessment agencies as defined above;

This Scheme is currently meant only for candidates availing themselves of skill development trainings from eligible training providers.