India and South Africa have great prospects for synergising their complementarities in areas of industry, services, trade and technology especially in the field of medium, small and micro enterprises, Union Minister Kalraj Mishra has said.
Mishra, the Minister of Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises, lauded a MoU signed between National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) and the Black Business Council of South Africa (BBC) for promoting cooperation in the field of medium, small and micro enterprises.
The MoU aims at developing youth-owned enterprises at five Rapid Incubation Centres in South Africa in cooperation with NSIC, which has successfully implemented it in India.
"India-South Africa cooperation is about sharing knowledge and expertise, exchange of best practices, supporting innovation and building capacity and skills," he said while speaking at an event here hosted by both organisations in cooperation with the India High Commission.
"We believe that these two nations have great prospects for synergizing their complementarities in areas of industry, services, trade and technology especially in the field of MSMEs," he said.
Mishra said the MSME sector dominated the industrial landscape of India, with 44 million units providing employment to some 80 million people.
The Minister said that although political relations between the two countries were good, economic ties had to be further nurtured to emerge stronger, given the geostrategic position of both countries.
"India offers South African companies an excellent location for addressing the huge domestic Indian market as well as the wider Asian market," he said.
Mishra called for greater exploitation of the potential of small enterprises.
"I believe that there is still much untapped potential that can be leveraged by MSMEs of both countries. Only a small fraction of MSMEs are aware of bilateral business opportunities and have the skill, risk appetite and resources to address these opportunities.
"In this regard, I would like to appreciate the initiative of NSIC to launch 'Build SMME' web portal dedicated to India-South African MSMEs. There is still a lot of scope in enhancing cooperation between the MSMEs of both the nations."
At the conference, Indian High Commissioner Ruchi Gyansham highlighted that the cooperative plan could help South Africa in the implementation of its National Development Plan (Vision 2030) to address the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment.
