Budget 2025: FM Nirmala Sitharaman Announces Centres Of Excellence In Skilling; Tech, AI Take Focus

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2025 today, and skilling, especially tech-related, was one of the focus areas. 

The FM announced that five National Centres of Excellence for skilling will be established with international partnerships and expertise in order to provide young people with the skills they need to “Make for India, Make for the World.”

A Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence for Education will be established with an investment of Rs 500 crore. This comes as India’s workforce is projected to expand by 33.89 million and AI transformation is expected to generate 2.73 million new tech jobs by 2028.

Additionally, 10,000 additional seats will be added in medical colleges next year and 75,000 seats to be added in next five years, the FM announced. There will also be expansion of capacity in IITs, and additional infrastructure will be set up.

The focus on skilling in the Budget was clear, as it aims to help young people meet the demands of the modern job and prosper in a global market by giving them tech-driven skills and digital literacy.

The Economic Survey 2025 had already stated that the government is establishing a resilient and responsive skilled ecosystem to keep pace with emerging global trends such as automation, generative AI, and digitalisation.

“Enabling Institutions, Insuring Institutions and Stewarding Institutions are essential to help graduate our workforce towards medium- and high-skill jobs, where AI can augment their efforts rather than replace them,” the Survey noted.

“Leveraging its young, dynamic, and tech-savvy population, India has the potential to create a workforce that can utilise AI to augment their work and productivity. Thus, India’s employment challenge is not just one of numbers, but also one of raising the overall quality of its workforce,” the Survey also noted.