Government to launch an e-commerce portal to help SMEs: Nitin Gadkari

The government is planing to launch an e-commerce project called 'Bharatcraft' for micro small and medium enterprises (MSME), on the lines of global online shopping platform such as Alibaba, said union minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday. Gadkari said the proposed platform could generate a turnover of Rs 10 trillion over the next few years. 

Gadkari, who is the minister for MSME and road, transport and highways, was speaking at an event orgainsed by the National Stock Exchange (NSE), whose SME platform Emerge saw the listing of its 200th company.

The minister said MSME sector is likely to contribute 50 per cent to the total GDP in the next five years. At present, the sector currently contributes 29 per cent to the country's GDP and employs 110 million people. Gadkari said the government had launched the 'Udyog Mitra' portal to ease of access to MSMEs financial and non-financial service needs.

To resolve the issue of delayed payments to MSMEs, the government is planning a legislation, which would help MSME sector get their payments within 45 days of the bills being due and any delay, beyond that, will  have legal ramifications. 

On Thursday, two companies migrated from the SME platform to the mainboard of NSE. Since its inception in 2012, the emerge platform has helped SME companies raise about Rs 3,100 crore. The market capitalization of these listed companies is about Rs 8,800 crores, and 22 SMEs have over time migrated to the main board of NSE. BSE's SME platform has 307 listed companies and out of which  66 have migrated to the mainboard.