Toshi Tiwari
Minister of State for MSME Giriraj Singh informed the audience at the recently held Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) Global SME Business Summit 2018 about the likely opening of 20 new technology centres across India and said that the requisite sanctions for launching these centres had already been acquired.
Currently, 10 such centres are operational in different states of the country. The MSME minister also stated that there were some challenges for the sector, such as availability of timely credit, but the government was working on all those areas.
The minister also added that schemes such as the Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) and credit guarantee fund trust for micro and small enterprises had helped create 19 lakh new entrepreneurs.
Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu said at the event that “SMEs should tap the opportunity to become part of the global value chain. For our SMEs to collaborate with global partners and become part of global value chain, our government has been working on policies and action plans that will support SMEs in different ways. We have also been working on facilitating export and protection of intellectual property rights.”
As per government data, MSMEs are contributing around 45 per cent to the country’s exports, 24.63 per cent to the GDP from service activities and 33.4 per cent to the manufacturing output.
