At a conference organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in New Delhi, Anil Agarwal, group Chairman of UK-listed natural resources giant Vedanta Resources Plc, said “the next spurt in manufacturing growth in India will be coming from a new wave of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which will also help the global economy by making up for the slowing demand for metals in markets like China”.
“Now, India has sufficient power. (Metal) consumption is going up and banks are looking forward to borrowing proposals. India is a country of entrepreneurs. It is time to create new SMEs,” said the founder chairman of the natural resources company that reported a revenue of $13 billion in 2014-15.
Agarwal is optimistic about SMEs leading economic growth as around 95% of industrial units in the country at present are SMEs and 40% of the value addition in the manufacturing sector takes place in the segment. SMEs are also a major employment creator. One area where these enterprises suffer is lack of easy access to credit as many of them do not have assets to pledge. Agarwal said banks are now eager to lend to SMEs.
Vedanta has presence in India’s oil and gas, copper, aluminium, zinc, iron ore and power industries. Agarwal said that India at present consumes 20 lakh tonnes of aluminium, which is expected to rise upto 2 crore tonnes.
