Kalraj Mishra Unleashed Action Plan for SC/ST Hub & MSME Databank

Union Cabinet Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Mr Kalraj Mishra chaired a meeting of the high-powered monitoring committee of the national SC/ST Hub and took stock of its activities including setting up of an MSME databank.

NEW DELHI: The Hub was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October to provide support to entrepreneurs from the community. Its main focus is to monitor the procurement from SC/ST MSMEs which at present is less than 0.3 percent against the required 4 percent target, reports media.

The Hub would primarily aid in strengthening market access/linkages, mentoring, capacity building, leveraging financial support schemes and sharing industry best practices.

It will have a data bank of MSMEs, vendor development programmes, mentoring, capacity building, finance facilitation, marketing assistance and consortiums of SC/ST suppliers and a management information system.

The data bank will also eventually enable the SC/ST entrepreneurs to indicate the names of Ministries or CPSE/Central Ministries to which the enterprise would be interested in supplying its products or services.

In order to enrich the MSME data bank with SC/ST enterprises, the field offices of National Small Industries Corporation have been advised to identify and enter SC/ST units in the databank.

The action plan of National SC/ST Hub aims to utilise various existing schemes of different Government departments and effectively leverage the opportunities and benefits entitled for the SC/ST entrepreneurs.

According to the Public Procurement Policy, 20 percent of total procurement of goods and services by Central Ministries and CPSEs shall be made from the MSEs, whereas 4 percent out of the 20 percent shall be made from MSEs owned by SC & ST entrepreneurs.