Partnership with global SME partnerships is critical for the growth of Indian SMEs as well as for the success of the Prime Minister’s visionary ‘Make in India’ initiative, MSME Minister Kalraj Mishra told a CII Global SME Business Summit in New Delhi.
The importance of SMEs has been stressed and reiterated at various fora. The Minister exclaimed that a platform like global summit is important to bring stakeholders forming various parts of the SME ecosystem in India and abroad together.
He said the dynamic global business environment has exposed Indian MSMEs to a plethora of opportunities as well as challenges and the government is committed to bringing in structural reforms to help India SMEs leverage the opportunities and evolve into globally competitive and robust powerhouses of the Indian economy.
Listing out some of the initiatives taken by the government to promote MSMEs in the country Mishra said a bill for redefinition of Indian MSMEs by enhancing the investment limits in plant & machinery has been tabled in parliament and is expected to be passed soon.
The government is also coming out with a framework for revival and exit of sick MSME enterprises, he said adding the Public Procurement Policy mandating PSEs to source 20% of their procurement requirement from MSMEs has been made mandatory from April this year.
On the basis of the recommendations made by the KV Kamath Committee to examine the financial architecture of Indian MSMEs, the MUDRA Bank set up with a corpus of Rs. 20,000 crore and a credit guarantee corpus of Rs. 3000 crore to fund the unfunded enterprises, he said.
One of the most important initiatives, according to him, is the Udyog Aadhaar Memorandum for the simplification and universalization of MSMEs through a simple, online, one page form. He added that the Udyog Aadhaar has met with a resounding success with around 75,000 registrations online since its inception in September, 2015.
He went on to share that the ministry is attempting to expand its presence on social media by uploading all schemes online and opening interactive sessions on Facebook and Twitter which have attracted over 12,000 followers. Emphasizing on the importance of skill development, he stated that the Ministry has launched a digital employment exchange platform for mapping skills.
Under the ASPIRE programme, agro-based industry will be encouraged and also setting up of vocational training incubation centres for students from villages who have passed ITI courses and class 10 has been proposed, he added. He concluded by stating that a collective approach between the centre, state, private sector, industry associations, academia, banking fraternity, and other stakeholders is the most effective way to tackle barriers to the growth of MSME.
The Minister also launched CII’s new SME initiative, The India MSME Alliance (TIMA) which is an apex body of MSME associations in India.
Image Courtesy : dnaindia