Skill Development - scope

It has also been experienced that
growth rate of such enterprises in
unorganized sector is much less
compared to the enterprises in the
formal sector. Ministry of MSME
is trying to address this issue.
The challenges of MSME are well
known and those are: (a) access to
Adequate and Timely Availability
of Credit, (b) Access to market,
and (c) Information & Availability
of latest Technology. In addition
to the above mentioned three
major challenges of the sector,
‘Infrastructure’ as well as ‘Lack
of information’ are another area
of concern. Although, Micro and
Small enterprises (MSEs) is listed
in the Priority Sector Lending of
RBI, MSEs gets crowded out by
other priority sector like Education
Loan, Housing loan, Retail sector
loan, etc. Small Industry
Development Bank of India
(SIDBI) has been functioning
for the promotion of MSE
sector for quite a long time.
However, there is still a need to
improve the credit facilitation
for MSME. Alternative system
of financing like Venture Capital,
Angel Funding, and Micro
Finance are trying to fill the gap.
Recently, SME Exchange has been
established with comparatively
liberal regulations in order to
attract SME to get listed. The
response has also been encouraging.
So far 22 SMEs have
been listed in the exchange and
able to generate Rs. 186 crore.
With the increasing awareness
about the exchange, it is expected
that many more SMEs would be
listed in the SME Exchange. This
is one of the very important steps
towards accessing public funds
by the SME.
Presently, there is a serious shortage
of skills in the country. Only
6 percent work force in India is
skilled. The comparative figure
for Korea is 96 percent, Japan 80
percent, Germany 75% and United
Kingdom 68 percent. While there
is a large unemployment in India,
persons with right skill are not
available. It has been felt that the
envisioned growth rate will be
difficult to achieve, if adequate
employment opportunities are
not created for the burgeoning
work force of the country. This to a
large extent can be made possible,
if these persons can be imparted
training in the required skills. In
order to reap the demographic
dividend and also to provide
gainful employment to the large
battery of unemployed youth, the
Government has embarked upon
an ambitious plan of skilling large
number of youth thus improving
their employability.
The launch of National Skill
Development Mission and
formation of National Skill
Development Agency (NSDA)
recently are the testimony of
Government of India’s serious
concern about the skill development.
The fact that India is one
of the first few countries in the
world to have set up National
Entrepreneurship Development
Institutions (EDIs) and have been
imparting Entrepreneurship Development
Programme (EDP) and
ESDP since 1960. The training
imparted by these three Institutes
and other organisations of the
Ministry of MSME has a distinct
advantage over other ministry/
department training programmes
as the former has an inbuilt module
of entrepreneurship in all the
training programmes. Therefore,
there is emphasis on job creators
rather than jobseeker.
14 Kaleidoscope July 2013