India has called for advancing mutual cooperation among members of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) for joint marketing, transfer of technology and forming joint ventures to enable small and medium enterprises to cater to the markets in grouping.
"India's vision for the Indian Ocean region is rooted in advancing cooperation and using our capabilities for the benefit of all members of IORA," Union MSME Minister Kalraj Mishra said here.
He was speaking at the 2nd economic and business conference of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).
The association comprises 20 member states and 7 dialogue partners, the Indian Ocean Tourism Organisation and the Indian Ocean Research Group has observer status.
The conference this year focused on micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME).
Mishra underlined the need for advancing mutual cooperation among IORA SMEs for joint marketing collaborations, transfer of technology and forming joint ventures to enable SMEs to cater to IORA member country markets.
He also lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's programme of facilitating youth to become job providers and not just job seekers.
"MSME plays an important role in this. We have launched another scheme called Micro Unite Refinance Agency (Mudra) to arrange for loan facilities," he said.
"We have brought the message of Make-in-India here and it has elicited very good response from everyone," he said.
Speaking to PTI, Mishra said, "we have presented the scheme as has been envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi".
"Even before our Prime Minister gave the Make-in-India slogan, he promised to make India a manufacturing hub. This requires investment, industrialisation, and addition of skilled manpower and quality assurance mechanisms," Mishra said.
He said that keeping this in mind, the Prime Minister has made a strong case for manufacturing and investment in India.
"The idea was to first develop India and for that it was decided to expand industries. In order to enhance the quality of manufactured products, the prime minister said programmes will be run across the country to develop skills under a programme called Skill India," said Mishra.
"Our effort is to renovate the traditional industries that we have had over the years. We have launched a scheme called Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industry (Sphurti Yojna) under which we will promote these industries in the form of clusters," Mishra said.
When asked about support for Gulf NRIs wanting to set up small scale industries in India, he said assistance will be provided to them.
"We have simplified the process of registration and the process of procuring loans under the ease of doing business programs. We have started Udyog Aadhar Memorandum registration process, which is just one page and is available online. Once filled and clicked, you can get your registration number within three minutes," said Mishra.
More than 5.5 lakh MSMEs have registered under the Udyog Adhar Memorandum.
