MSME Ministry planning incubation centres to boost sector: Madhav Lal

AHMEDABAD: The government is mulling launching district-level incubation centres across the country to revitalise the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector and encourage entrepreneurship as per the Budgetary provision, a senior bureaucrat said here today.

"The Budget (2014-15) gave an indication for the MSMEs growth. We are planning to start district-level incubation centres in which people will come and learn to start new enterprises," MSME Secretary Madhav Lal said here.

Addressing an event organised by the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industries ( GCCI) on 'MSME Growth Engine', Lal also rolled out the Centre's plan to boost growth of the sector.

"An announcement was also made in the Budget to form a committee for the financial architecture for MSMEs. Now, we will talk with the concerned stake-holders to take forward the SMEs growth, and it is likely to be completed within next three or four months," Lal told reporters later.

While presenting the Budget on Thursday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had unveiled a slew of measures to revive MSMEs while laying thrust on promotion of start-ups and announced a venture capital fund with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore.

Lal said that MSME Ministry will also launch "virtual clusters" to ensure easy accessibility.

"We are to launch virtual clusters so that a person can approach the MSME Ministry from anywhere to get the best professional advice," he said.

However, the Secretary said that the Ministry is encountering difficulties in procuring machinery needed for running incubation centres.

"We need machines in incubation centres to train the people associated with agro, food or embroidery products. We (MSME Ministry) had faced some difficulties while purchasing machines.

I did not know it was so difficult to purchase machines as we were informed that it will take three months time," Lal said, adding that the Centre's road-map for the sector is very progressive.

"Our road-map is very progressive. We have to work very closely with the state governments and local associations to see the betterment of the sector," he added.

Earlier in the programme, 20 mini-clusters were rewarded with a certificate of recognition by Lal.

While eight of these clusters are from the pilot phase, seven are under the Upscaled Lean Manufacturing Competitiveness Scheme ( LMCS), and five new clusters from GCCI.