National Skill Development Corp soon

NEW DELHI: In a move to give boost to the manufacturing sector, government is likely to form National Skill Development Corp - a joint venture of government and industrial associations for skill development of workers, within a month.

"Finance Minister P Chidambaram has indicated that the NSDC could come up by September 1," CII President K V Kamath told reporters on Tuesday, after a delegation of Industrial chambers met him. On Independence Day, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced to launch a corporation as part of National Skill Development Mission.

Kamath said with 51:49 shareholding of private and government, the corporation would have an equity of Rs 10 crore and a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore that would be expanded to Rs 15,000 crore over the years.

Considering shortage of skilled manpower in the manufacturing sector, government envisages to expand the annual training capacity of vocational training institutes to 15 million from the present level of about 3.4 million by 2012 through this venture.

It would set up world class training institutes in 13 high growth areas like healthcare, engineering, auto, steel, gems and jewellery, hotels, hospitality, ITes and software services, furniture and furnishing, leather and leather goods.

FICCI Director General Amit Mitra said the government would provide funds to the private sector-led corporation through a trust, which would play a positive role to strengthen the manufacturing sector.

Ten industrial bodies including FICCI, CII, Assocham apart from associations of Gems and Jewellery, textile, leather, auto components, real estate and hospitality have agreed to contribute to the venture.