Cabinet approves Rs 10,000-crore SME Growth Fund and new authority to plan transport and logistics

New Delhi: The union cabinet on Tuesday approved a ₹10,000-crore SME Growth Fund (SGF) to provide long-term equity capital to small and medium enterprises, and an Integrated Transport & Logistics Authority to strengthen research, planning, appraisal, monitoring and impact assessment for transportation and logistics.

The SGF, announced in Budget 2026-27, is aimed at catalysing growth-oriented capital for SMEs and enabling the emergence of champion Indian enterprises across manufacturing, services, technology, innovation-driven sectors and strategic value chains.

The fund is expected to address a structural gap that currently exists for equity growth capital for SMEs. A majority of existing funds that provide equity support focus on early-stage and micro enterprises, a government release said.


The initiative will enable Indian SMEs to scale operations, invest in technology and manufacturing capacity, expand into international markets, integrate into global value chains, and undertake strategic investments.

Briefing the media on cabinet decisions, union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the fund will help SMEs to tap emerging opportunities created under several recent free trade agreements signed by India.

Transport Master Plan

Formed as a special purpose vehicle under the administrative control of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the Integrated Transport & Logistics Authority (ITLA) is expected to address the long-standing challenges arising from fragmented planning and implementation across multiple transport-related ministries and agencies.

"By fostering greater coordination and multi-modal integration, ITLA is a new institution responsible for prospective planning for infrastructure development in the country," Vaishnaw said.

The authority will prepare a comprehensive National Transport Master Plan with a planning horizon of ten years or more, covering roads, railways, ports and shipping, civil aviation, inland waterways, coastal shipping, urban mobility and logistics.

Besides, it will evaluate short-term sectoral plans (five years or so) and annual plans of transport ministries to ensure consistency and alignment with the master plan and promote multi-modal infrastructure development.

ITLA will be responsible for technical appraisal and monitoring the implementation of transport and infrastructure projects above ₹500 crore.

It will also provide a coordinated mechanism for issue resolution and undertake post-implementation impact assessment of these projects besides building a National Transport Data Repository (NTDR) with transport and logistics datasets from multiple sources, including GSTN e-way bill, FASTag, Vahan, GPS-based systems, urban traffic management systems and other relevant databases and carry out data analytics (e.g. Freight Flow/O-D analytics) for planning, monitoring and impact assessment.