SME congregation raises hopes for small, medium industries in MP

The new year may bring fresh influx of foreign buyers for local small and medium-scale industries of Madhya Pradesh. Buoyed by the encouraging response from its earlier MSME buyer-seller meetlast year, state-owned MP Laghu Udyog Nigam (MPLUN) is once again going to organise a three-day mega congregation of SMEs from all over the world at Gwalior from January 16 to 18. The meet will also invite select participants of Prawasi Bharatiya Diwas being organised in New Delhi.

As a part of its MP Expotech series, which the MPLUN launched in 2008 from Gwalior, the 2010 buyer-seller meet will be third in a row and will invite buyers from handicraft and building material sector too. A large number of SMEs in Madhya Pradesh offer world class herbal and natural products and pharmaceuticals at cheaper rates.

MSMEs of South East Asian and African nations had evinced interest in importing raw material from Madhya Pradesh in the previous meet in Indore. “Our follow-up exercise reveals that Rs 100 crore deals have reached a conversion stage and we are expecting more encouraging response this time as we are also including handicraft and building material sector in this meet besides agri processing industry, textiles, engineering goods, chemical and medicines and herbal products,” Chief General Manager, MPLUN BM Singhtold BS.

As many as 75 buyers from Eastern Europe, CIS countries, Latin America, Africa and SAARC nations will have dialogue with their counterparts in Madhya Pradesh for importing raw material and various products. A delegation led by a senior minister from Burkina Faso and senior officials will also come to talk to MP Government to address some issues that hindering import. “Our importers have problem due to some process in registration of products. The delegation will discuss with our government to resolve the problems,” Singh added.

So far African nations have been interested in importing raw material for pharmaceutical products, Koreans for agri products, while Malaysian, Belarus and Nepal showed interest in rice import in the previous Expotech meet at Indore.

If the state administration pursues facilities like grant of benefit under the duty entitlement pass book scheme , it would help the MSME exports . Local industries want the Centre to set up a nodal agency that can ease documentation process which otherwise makes exports difficult. The state government may include certain provisions in the forthcoming industry policy.