Govt policy for SSIs soon — Raje

The minister called upon the industry to increase its investment in Research and Development (R&D) to compete with imported technology. Voicing her concern over the increasing trend of SSI units being subjected to anti-dumping and countervailing duties Raje said, "we are strengthening our own institutional mechanism to take similar action against imports that are not in line with the WTO agreements in order to provide a level-playing field".

The government should consider setting up of a task forceto study financial aspects and providing of technical support, Managing Director of Small Industrial Development Bank of India (SIDBI), Shailendra Narain said. There was a need to review policies and readjust the financial schemes in the light of the WTO, he said.

On the initiatives taken by SIDBI to help the SSI sector Narain said, "the Finance Minister had recently extended SIDBI’s Rs 300 crore Technology Development and Modernisation Fund by three years." The fund, launched in 1996 with a corpus of Rs 300 crore, extends loans at 13 per cent to SSI units for R&D, modernisation and upgrading technology.

SIDBI would also be funding an innovation centre for the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) which would forecast technology for ready-made garments, he said adding the bank would be constructing upto seven innovation centres around the country in collaboration with IITs and IIMs under its National Programme for Innovation and Incubation.

"The first innovation centre will come up at IIT Kanpur in the next four months," he said and added each centre would require an investment of upto eight crore.