MSME minister Gadkari targets 10 lakh crore turnover through govt. E-commerce portal

Union Minister for Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) Nitin Gadkari on Friday announced the launching of a new marketing portal by the Indian government to help the MSME sector in the country and set a target of 10 lakh crore revenue in the next 2-3 years.

After inaugurating the sixth India International MSME Expo and Summit in Delhi, Gadkari said, "The government had decided to launch a new marketing portal named Bharat Craft and we will target turnover of Rs 10 lakh crore in the coming 2 years through it to address the MSMEs problem of marketing. It is a working name, we might invite applications from the public for its final name in the future," Gadkari said at the event here.

The Union Minister said that the government was taking a cue from the success of private E-commerce platforms to address the MSME sector's problem of marketing.

Applauding MSME's contribution to the Indian economy, Gadkari stressed upon the need for even bigger participation from them to fulfil the goal set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make India a five-trillion dollar economy in the coming years.

"The MSME and SME's contribute 29 per cent to the country's GDP. Apart from this, 40 per cent of our exports come from this sector and they have created 11 crore jobs in the country, but to achieve the target of $ 5 trillion economy, we will have to raise the contribution of MSME's to 50 per cent and to address the problem of unemployment we will also have to add 5 crore jobs in the coming five years," he said.

Urging MSME to get registered in the stock exchange, Gadkari said, "Yesterday, 200 MSMEs got themselves registered in the National Stock Exchange (NSE) market. I will also request the other good performing MSMEs to get themselves registered under NSE so that they can get appropriate funding."

"We have signed MOU's with World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and KFW to provide money at a low-capital cost to MSME's in different sectors," he added.