Workshop held to boost growth of entrepreneurship

Our Correspondent
Kohima, March 13 (EMN): The executive engineer of the department of Industries and Commerce, Asenla Walling, on Friday highlighted various ongoing and proposed schemes that have been taken up by the department and the proposed Nagaland trade, investment and industrial policy.

Walling was speaking at the state-level workshop on digital micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) scheme organised by common service centres (CSC) e-Governance Service India Limited at AMK Hall in Kohima on March 13.

She explained that the mission of the policy is to create a business-friendly environment with simplified procedures and improved infrastructures to encourage innovative entrepreneurial skills, taking advantage of modern technology and local strengths; fostering competitive industrial growth and investment.

She informed that the objective of the policy is to encourage growth of entrepreneurship and encourage investments, generate employment and reduce poverty. Two common facility centre schemes (CFCS) namely food processing cluster in Mokokchung and wooden furniture cluster in Dimapur have been approved under MSE-CDP (Micro Small Enterprise-Cluster Development Programme), she added.

Walling informed that “CFCS will be managed by 90 wooden furniture micro units and 110 food processing micro units”. She further highlighted the state’s startup policy and the Nagaland State Food Processing Industries Policy.

Director in-charge, MSME, DI Dimapur, Taliwati Longchar, mentioned some of the challenges faced by Indian MSMEs, such as access to technology, IPR-related issues, wasteful usages of manpower and resources, energy inefficiency and associated high cost, and law market penetration.

He also stated that the Digital MSME Scheme was to ensure promotion of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in MSMEs; to encourage and assist the potential MSME clusters to adopt ICT tools and applications in their production and business process in order to improve their productivity and competitiveness in national and international markets.

Assistant director of MSME DI, Dimapur, Sabarigiri M shared various features and benefits of GeM portal for MSME segment, stating that it is a public procurement website through which the government is required to procure all its services and products subject only to availability. He stated that there is a huge scope for MSMEs to benefit out of GeM and encouraged the business people and entrepreneurs to register under it.

SPM, CSC E-Governance Services India Limited, Lanusosang Jamir, informed that in Nagaland, one of the recent projects of CSC in large scale is the 7th Economic Census, and till date they have enumerated 4,57,854 households and completed enumeration of nine districts. Describing the collaboration of CSC and MSME as one of the greatest initiatives, he stated that one needs skills and knowledge to start an enterprise. “Our government also provides entrepreneurship development programmes and entrepreneurship trainings,” he said, adding that one also needs raw materials, technical support and government schemes like murda loans, which CSCs can assist, to start an enterprise.