Union Minister for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises Nitin Gadkari, on Tuesday, launched a three-year project ‘Tech-Saksham’ in partnership with industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to enable technology adoption among MSMEs in India, said media reports.

The vision of the project is to bridge the gap in technology adoption for MSMEs so as to provide an impetus for them to be competitive on a global scale, increase their contribution to country exports, and leverage cost efficiencies.

The project has on-boarded technology giants including Dell, HP, Intel, Vodafone Idea, WhatsApp, and YES Bank to help MSMEs overcome challenges in adopting technology including awareness and cost of technology purchase or maintenance, resources, and manpower required to run the technologies, return on investments, etc., the ministry said in a statement. The project is looking to impact around 10,000 MSMEs. 

Last month, Nitin Gadkari announced the launch of ecommerce portal ‘Bharatcraft’, based on the lines of Alibaba in China and Amazon in the US, for selling products manufactured by the small industries.

The Minister expressed confidence that the portal will generate a turnover of Rs 10 lakh crore in two years after its launch. He said in the Lok Sabha during Question Hour, “It will provide a good opportunity to the MSME sector which contributes significantly to job generation and promoting the growth of the country.”

The Minister further said that banks have sanctioned 36,000 loans under the 'psbloansin59minutes' portal.

Initially, it was taking time, he said, adding "it is our endeavour to reduce the time taken for disbursement".

With regard to loans given to MSMEs, Gadkari said bank credit to the sector has increased from Rs 10.70 lakh crore at the end of March 2017 to Rs 14.97 lakh crore in March 2019.

He said the government has taken several steps to promote MSME sector including two percent interest subvention provided MSMEs have Udyog Aadhaar Number (UAN) and GST registration.

Published On : 29-08-2019

Source : SMB Story