The Union Minister of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises Shri Mahabir Prasad has said that among the several policy initiatives that India has undertaken in the last decade of the last century, Cluster Development appears to be an attractive and efficacious one.
“After a certain amount of experimentation on the degree and type of intervention that government could undertake or encourage, we veered towards certain successful models”, the Minister said. Shri Prasad was speaking at the Asia-Europe Ministerial Meeting (ASEM) on Small & Medium Enterprises in Beijing.
Shri Prasad said the model of Cluster Development that “we have undertaken entails a whole range of schemes, which means that those Ministries, Departments or Agencies that are well versed in a particular subject will be assisting those SME clusters that operate in their domain.”
Giving specific examples he said clusters of handmade textiles would be looked after by the specialized agency meant for such textile enterprises; clusters of food units would be serviced by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries and so on.
In all, the government identified more than 3000 SME clusters of artisan-specific, village and small enterprises in India and took up 1150 such clusters for intervention and improvement, he added.
Shri Prasad also informed that India had undertaken a programme for 'Twinning' of Indian SME clusters with similar SME clusters in Italy.
India also had a record of disseminating technology amongst certain developing countries in Africa and Asia and this new programme of cluster development could also be included by in such efforts.
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