New Delhi, Mar 3 (KNN) Virtual Clusters, a dedicated web-portal which will enable small businesses, their associates, industry experts, banks, consultants and R and D bodies to come together at a common platform and leverage mutual growth and advantage, has been launched by the MSME Ministry.
Conceived as supplementing physical clusters, the Virtual Clusters (VCs), “facilitate the stakeholders to leverage the expertise of each other to their mutual growth and benefit,” Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, K H Muniyappa said after launching the VCs here last week.
Addressing the function to mark the launch of the VCs, Secretary in the Ministry of MSME Madhav Lal said, these clusters would allow small businesses belonging to different sectors to co-exist with their fellow enterprises on the web-portal and enable them to capitalize on the benefits of networking. This would contribute towards further growth of MSME Sector.
The web-portal will be administered by The National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD), an organization under the Ministry of MSME.
The Ministry of MSME has an annual budget of over Rs 3000 crore and runs MSME support programmes such as Credit guarantee trust fund for providing collateral free loans, Credit linked capital subsidy scheme for technology upgradation, National manufacturing competiveness programme and cluster development programmes.
India has around 400 industrial clusters and over 3000 artisan clusters. Talking about the concept, UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organisation) representative, Gerardo Patacconi who is chief of cluster and business linkage unit said here recently that clusters remained an effective policy tool for inclusive and sustainable economic development and cluster development reinforced industrial development.
