The utilisation of money from the Rs 5,000 crore India Opportunities Venture Fund created with the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) would be taken up shortly by the union ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
This was informed by the union minister of state (independent charge) for MSMEs K H Muniyappa at an event organised by the CII here on Thursday.
“I will call the SIDBI chairman and managing director and seek necessary information from him shortly,” he told a member at the event, who raised concerns that the Fund was not being utilised for the intended purpose.
The Centre had announced setting up of a Rs 5,000 crore India Opportunities Venture Fund with SIDBI to enhance availability of equity to MSMEs, in the 2012-13 union budget.
Muniyappa said that Indian MSMEs lack competitiveness and institutions like CII can play an enabling role in overcoming it. He advocated the cluster approach to enhance R&D in MSMEs. At the event, CII announced a programme called “Golden Top Companies”(GTC100)” in which it will select 100 north-based small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and enable them to scale up from small to medium or medium to large through a series of focussed interventions.