Mastercard joints Govt in Digital Saksham initiative
Both the private and public sectors are getting together to raise the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises’ (MSMEs) contribution to the Indian economy to 50% and contribution to exports to 60% by becoming competitive in a changing market place.
“We need to make 50% of the growth of the Indian economy come from the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, raise its contribution to exports to 60% and create 5 crore new jobs. To realize this potential– micro and small businesses need to become increasingly competitive in a changing marketplace,” Nitin Gadkari, MSME Minister said on 9 Dec 2020.
MSME sector currently contributes 30% to GDP and 48% to exports.
Gadkari stated the MSME goals as the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) announced a strategic MoU with Mastercard’s Centre for Inclusive Growth and National Institute for Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (ni-MSME), an organistion of MSME Ministry to launch the Digital Saksham Initiative – an expansive program designed to strengthen the competitiveness of MSMEs through digital know-how and acceptance.
The tripartite collaboration aims to educate and train micro and small business owners and entrepreneurs enabling them to integrate into the digital economy and access credit, expand their market access, diversify their customer base, digitize their financial operations and solidify their supply chain. The ultimate objective is to unlock the full potential of MSMEs in India, measured by greater profitability and financial resilience.
“I am pleased to note that the project Digital Saksham by CII, Mastercard and ni-MSME entails a scale of reaching out to more than 3 lakh MSMEs in 25 cities including rural and peri-urban clusters.
“This will help drive systemic transformation and further accelerate achievements towards meeting our goals and ensure financial inclusion,” Gadkari said at the 17th Global SME Business Summit 2020, virtually, organized by CII in partnership with the MSME Ministry.
“Small businesses play an enormous role in rebuilding local communities and supporting economic recovery. It is critical that we look for solutions that don’t just focus on how we can support SMEs, but also those that are designed to enable SMEs to support themselves,” elaborated Ari Sarker, Co-President, Asia Pacific, Mastercard, on the MoU and partnership.
“Towards this goal, Mastercard is delighted to partner with the Government of India via the National Institute for Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (ni-MSME) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to launch the Digital Saksham initiative.
“The program is an extension of Mastercard’s global and India commitment to empower, enable, and enhance small entrepreneurs making them more competitive,” stressed Sarker.
The Digital Saksham initiative will focus on activating CII’s vast membership base which includes 67% of MSMEs to upskill especially the micro and small businesses, CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee.
“Through a combination of CII’s broad footprint with 67 offices across the country and collaboration with ni-MSME, CII will target key supply chains and use a cluster approach to deliver relevant skills know-how to the last mile entrepreneur,” said Banerjee.
CII will also engage value chain anchors in the delivery of training through their supply chains.
“We have an ambitious outreach target on creating awareness on digital financial literacy for 3 lakhs micro and small business who will attain the knowledge and access to personal finance strategies and digital financial instruments through this intervention which will spread across 25 cities in 7 states,” he said.
The implementation of the project is proposed from January 2021 and the execution of training among the MSMEs from June 2021. #exports #economy #manufacturing #investment /fiinews.com
