Speakers from different sectors at a ‘Bengal, global business summit’ “Come to Bengal, Ride the Growth”, held in Kolkata yesterday urged the entrepreneurs of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and textiles to avail ‘abundant’ opportunities prevailing in the state to accelerate their business to meet the global challenges.
Speakers felt that West Bengal has adequate opportunities, including availability of land, lower cost of labour, government’s various incentives and skilled manpower. To promote administrative experiences in running units, the government has entered into an agreement with IIM Kolkata to train 400 employees of state’s MSME department so that they can exchange their knowledge with the entrepreneurs to improve quality and productivity, state’s textile secretary, Mr. Rajiva Sinha said.
As a special impetus to women entrepreneurs in the state, government has offered 20 per cent more incentives to them than that for others, Mr. Sinha said. He urged the entrepreneurs to “stand on their feet first then come to government for assistance. They will always find us by their side,” Mr. Sinha added.
Speakers were confident that manufacturing industry has an important role to play as it has a great potential with more and more central projects are coming in from the sectors like army, navy and air force. Chairman of the Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd (GRSE), Mr. A. K. Varma pointed out that a major investment is being made at all defense units in the state which will create adequate opportunities for MSME units. Now it is upto the entrepreneurs to make them competent to avail the opportunity, Mr. Varma said.
On the textile sector, managing director, TT Limited, a popular hosiery brand, Mr. Sanjay Jain mentioned about the greater opportunity particularly in garment sector. Bengal which has picked up under the leadership of the present government, can ultimately be a super power in this sector in the country. The state, he said, has largest human resources. Since China is losing ground in respect of garment exports in the last few years, India can now avail the opportunities to boost volume of exports in readymade garment, Mr. Jain said.
He also appreciated the West Bengal government’s initiative to accelerate the growth of textile sector offering various incentives both in respect of the availability of raw materials and other important areas. Mr. Jain said that the state government also stressed on the labour skill development programmes by imparting training to workers through more and more training centres. Besides, the government has taken effective measures to ease exchange of communication between government’s departments and the applicants. He, however, advocated for early introduction of an effective labour law in the state until a central law is announced, Mr. Jain added.
About the MSME equity fund digital gateway, the summit referred the module, which provides digital gateway equity funding from West Bengal MSME venture capital fund. The department has launched the MSME equity fund for providing equity capital to potential MSMEs in the state for startup and growth-expansion. Prospective enterprises can post their proposals for equity capital for MSME equity fund.
The summit, organised by West Bengal government, also laid a great importance to the availability of skilled labour to bridge the gap between the demand and supply to the industry. It also felt that the industry will have adequate skilled manpower if the government and the private bodies paid proper attention to the issue creating more training institutes as well as centres of excellence in the country.
Representatives from financial sector, including banks ruled out the apprehension that banks are not that liberal to MSME sector than that to big and major projects. They said MSME is always welcome to them like other sectors if it maintains the rules and criterion properly. “It is very often seen that the loan money is being utilized in other areas than that of the real one. This creates lack of trust. This sort of misuse of funds creates misunderstanding,” representative of a nationalized bank said.
