The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to announce a financing package for the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), as the sector has been facing credit crunch due to delay in payments and unwillingness on the part of banks towards offering loans in the backdrop of current global financial scenario, said Dinesh Rai, secretary, ministry of MSME. He was speaking at a conference in New Delhi.
"The government has also appointed a committee of secretaries to look at the problems being faced by the MSME sector, which include arenas of skills development, clusters approach, credit availability, technical and market considerations," said Rai, adding that integrating the sector with global players is also of immense importance.
He said that the ministry has proposed setting up a Rs 1,000 crore fund for MSMEs, while the reported plans of RBI to create a refinance package for MSMEs was to be decided this week. Though it has been reported that RBI was looking at a package of Rs 25,000 crore, Rai said he was not aware of the amount. A decision is expected this week, he said.
On job losses expected in the small scale sector, Rai said that since this was spread over various sectors, the ministry had no data on it. But he said that jobs were being created through Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme for generating 37 lakh jobs, besides the soon to be unrolled skill development initiative with 50,000 skilling centres.
He said that the National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) had also created a portal that will also help link MSMEs with small enterprises abroad. Later, the NSIC and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) inked an MoU for long term cooperation. While CII has 600 registered members, NSIC implements various programmes for over one lakh MSMEs.
