Budget 2023: Sitharaman announces to set up a national financial information registry

New Delhi: During the Union Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said a national financial information registry will be set up to serve as the central repository of financial and ancillary information.
"This will facilitate efficient flow of credit, promote financial inclusion, and foster financial stability," the Finance Minister said, adding, "A new legislative framework will govern this credit public infrastructure, and it will be designed in consultation with the RBI (Reserve Bank of India)." The Union minister also announced a National Data Governance Policy, which will enable access to anonymised data. The Finance Minister said this will unleash innovation and research by start-ups and academia.
Anonymisation is a data processing technique that removes or modifies personally identifiable information; it results in anonymised data that cannot be associated with any one individual.
During the Budget, FM Sitharaman also announced that the government will establish three centres of artificial intelligence (AI) at institutions with the help of private players in the industry.
As part of the National Data Governance Policy framework, a platform will be designed which will process requests and provide access to non-personal and/or anonymised datasets to Indian researchers and start-ups.
Earlier, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) had issued a draft policy on the same but retracted it after the ministry faced widespread criticism over planning to monetise sharing of data. The new (current) draft does not have provisions for data monetisation.
With this, the government will also set up the India's 'Datasets' programme, which will consist of non-personal and anonymised datasets from government entities that have collected data from Indian citizens or those in India. The policy said that private entities will be encouraged to share such data. (ANI)