A day before the union budget was presented, on July 4, union Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Minister Nitin Gadkari announced in the Lok Sabha that the central government is aiming to create an e-commerce website to sell products from the MSMEand Khadi sector. This is done in order to increase the contribution of these sectors to the Indian economy as micro, small and medium enterprises contribute to 29% of the country’s GDP.
MSME ministry’s new e-commerce will resemble China’s Alibaba and America’s Amazon.com. This new platform will not only connect the traders directly with the customers but will also increase their market value, its contribution to GDP as well as employment.
“Amazon in the US and Alibaba in China did a world of good to their MSME sector. On those lines, for MSME and Khadi Gramudyog, we are going to launch a big marketing site. The preparations have started and a lot of people and industries will have access to it,” the Union Minister said.
India’s MSME sector is a huge stakeholder in the country’s economy and has generated jobs for millions of people but the only thing it lacks is the capability to market its products and reach to new customers. Government plans to curb this issue with the help of this website which will increase the sales and meet the target of making the MSME sector reach 50% of Indian GDP in the next five years.
This step is expected to increase the employment rate by bringing a lot of job opportunities as well as attracting more people to start their businesses to sell on the site. The estimate of employment through this step is 15 crore jobs.
“Targets should be big…our target is that in the next five years, we will contribute 50% to India’s gross domestic product (GDP), and we will give employment to 5 crores (more) people,” Gadkari said.
When questioned by the opposition on whether the government will be able to walk the talk, Gadkari said that he has fulfilled all his promises and he will happily welcome all the criticism if he fails in this plan but till now, he has achieved all that he said just like making roads.
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