“We came up with an offer…” FM Nirmala Sitharaman announces AI Training in every District ITI

Sep 18, 2025

The Union government plans to transform Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) across the country into Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven training centres, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday. She said “"In every budget, in the last 2-3 years, we made a provision for skilling our manpower, not just through training courses but by engaging them with different authorities who seem to have a good plan on skilling... We are making sure that the youth are being brought with some incentives. We have committed ourselves to endow institutions that have been there for decades in India, but without much upgradation. It requires some money. We offered from the budget so that institutions which are at the grassroot level, which don't invoke so much of a wow factor, because they are now fading out, not much money has been invested in them. With the changing needs of industry... The crop doesn't come from there for recruitment when you need young people... So the ITIs, although present at the district level in every state, were not adding to the rapidly changing production environment. We came up with an offer from the central government that if these ITIs, one in every district, adopt a hub and spoke model within a state, we will be able to provide them the entire money required for upgrading these places for AI-driven training centres..."