Stakeholders, policy-makers have to give special focus to SMEs, says Jitendra Singh

Union minister Jitendra Singh Friday said all stakeholders and policy-planners will have to give a special focus to small and medium businesses when the Covid-19 pandemic is over.

Addressing the 'Amazon Sambhav online Summit', Singh said the post-Covid economy of India will look for unexplored potentials and under such circumstances, the hitherto lesser utilised resources from lesser projected regions will assume an important role.

In the aftermath of Covid-19, all the stakeholders and policy-planners will have to give a special focus to small and medium businesses as well as the sustainability of new or recent Start-Ups, he said at the summit -- “Unlocking Infinite Possibilities for India”.

Singh, the Union Minister for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), said that in times like this, joint initiatives and joint ventures will be imperative to put back on track all that had tended to get off the track due to Covid-19 related turbulence.

In this regard, he cited the example of bamboo from Northeast and other vast resources in the North Eastern Region as a whole.

The minister said every adversity is accompanied with some virtue and one of the positive aspects of tumultuous Covid-19 phase has been that it prompted all to look for new avenues, new potentials and new resources to supplement the economy and make up for the deficit accruing as a result of the pandemic.

This, in turn, has led to a situation, wherein the Northeastern region has an opportunity to emerge as the business destination of the entire Indian subcontinent, he said.

Lauding the Amazon's new initiative titled “Northeast Spotlight”, Singh said this is indicative of the fact that even the business world of India has begun to realise where it should be looking to make a further headway in a post-Covid economy.

He said when all the known conventional resources and potentials across the country appeared to have got saturated or exhausted, the Northeast will still have something to offer and that gives it a pivotal role in the times to come.

The Modi government is seriously conscious of this emerging scenario, he said.