By IANS,
New Delhi : Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)Minister Vayalar Ravi Thursday said cluster development should be a priority business strategy for the sector.
The minister said guidelines for the cluster development programme have been comprehensively prepared to provide higher support to the SMEs.
“With this, more than 500 clusters spread across the country have so far been taken up for diagnostic study, soft interventions and setting up of common facility centres under the program,” Ravi said at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) event here.
“The efforts under the scheme are focused on covering more and more clusters across the country,” he added.
Stating that access to capital and cost of capital are the biggest challenges for mid-size and emerging corporate business, the minister elaborated the schemes the ministry is running for collateral-free credit.
He said eight lakh proposals have already been approved under this scheme and urged SMEs to take advantage of it.