By IANS
New Delhi : The Ludhiana Hand Tools and Forging Envirocare (LHTFE), a firm floated by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Ludhiana’s steel forging cluster, will trade in the world’s booming carbon market.
The firm will get required funding for this purpose from the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), according to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) inked here Monday.
SIDBI chairman and managing director R.M. Malla, said: “Funding would be initially provided at a concession to help the project take off.”
This is the first time in the Indian SME sector that some 300 firms have come together to reap benefits of the world’s carbon trading market.
While SIDBI will provide funding to help the SMEs implement key energy conservation programmes, it has roped in the World Bank to facilitate trading of carbon credits.
SIDBI has signed a letter of intent with the multilateral bank.
Charles Cormier, team leader for the World Bank’s energy and environment programme for South Asia region, reiterated his organisation’s continued support to the project.
The world carbon market is currently growing at the rate of $100 billion per year.
India, which has the second largest portfolio of clean development mechanism (CDM) projects in the world, has been unable to reap commensurate benefits.
It is because most of these projects lack requisite size and so face serious constraints in selling their generated carbon credits in a market where big players prefer to buy from a single source.