| "The government policy is not to provide protection but to identify problem areas in the sector and remove the hurdles that came in the way of the small- scale units to operate efficiently." |
| "Our aim is to equip the industry to face competition from international markets and large -scale units effectively," Anupam Dasgupta, Secretary, SSI ministry, said at the social sector editor's conference held here today. |
| The industry had to accept globalisation as a reality and learn to deal with the situation. The government could reduce the impact of the changing world scenario for some time, but ultimately, only those units that were competitive enough would survive, Dasgupta added. |
| He identified the lack of credit as a major problem facing the SSI sector, saying that the sector's share in total industrial lending had come down to 10.1 per cent in 2003-04 from 17.5 per cent in 1997-98. |
| The performance of the SSI sector had been very encouraging in the past seven years, with the sector recording higher growth than the industrial sector as a whole. |
| For instance, he said, in 2003-04, while the SSI sector grew by 8.6 per cent, the growth for the industrial sector was 6.9 per cent. |
| Listing the steps taken by the ministry to gear up the small-scale sector for the globalised world, he said that in future the ministry would take up development of industrial clusters on a priority basis. |
| "Development of 59 such clusters has already commenced in consultation with state governments, industrial associations and financial institutions," he said. |
| Dasgupta added that for resolving problems of "inspector raj" and removal of requirements of maintaining a plethora of registers and observing multitude of labour-related legislations, an SSI Bill had been drafted that could be introduced in the winter session of Parliament. |
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