By IANS
New Delhi : Italy will invest over euro three million for a project aimed at developing India’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and make them globally competitive.
The three-year project, called “Consolidated Project for SMEs Development in India”, will be overseen by the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises.
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (Unido) will be the implementation agency.
Sectors identified for the project are leather, including tanning, footwear, and leather goods, and auto components.
The leather industrial clusters to receive project support are Chennai for tanning and footwear, Agra for footwear and Shantiniketan in West Bengal for leather goods.
In the auto component sector, the cluster in Chennai will receive support. There would also be interventions to boost foreign direct investment and business promotion in Pune and the national capital region.
The first phase of the project started earlier this year with signing of a cooperation agreement between Indian and Italian shoe manufacturers.
The agreement aims at focusing on transfer of skills and expertise from the Italian footwear industry to shoemakers in India, and assist small businesses in India to upgrade footwear technology.
Italy is among the world leaders in the SME cluster development model, and is the leading shoe manufacturing country in the EU with a 40 percent world market share, followed by Spain and Portugal.