New Delhi, Oct 31 (KNN) Office of Development Commissioner, MSME, the nodal government agency for supporting growth and development of the MSME sector, would soon start a scheme to subsidise the knowhow costs of MSMEs.

KNN India has learnt from official sources that the Technology Acquisition and Development Fund scheme, till now was being implemented by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has been transferred to the Ministry of MSME and DC, MSME will implement the scheme here after.

The TADF scheme resulted out of the ‘Make in India’ call of Narendra Modi to build capacity of the MSME sector for world class manufacturing.

Under the scheme, 50% of the cost of buying of knowhow by MSMEs from India or foreign, sources were to be reimbursed by the Government within a ceiling of Rs. 20 lakh.

The need, suitability and cost of the proposed technology were to be ascertained by a project approval board.

DC-MSME is implementing the CLCSS scheme under which MSMEs are subsidised for the cost of plant and machinery towards modernisation of manufacturing process / products.

However, for the cutting edge technology, in the global market, the cost of know how is often equal to the machines and equipment and MSMEs were lobbying for quite some time for Government assistance in this regard also.

The TADF scheme has so far a lack lustre performance and the details of the MSMEs supported under the scheme and the details of the technology sourced, are not available in public domain.

 According to the official sources, the scheme will be recast to make it more users friendly and in this regard the office of DC, MSME will hold wide consultations with MSME Associations and other stakeholders. (KNN/ DB)