Vendor Development Programmes, Buyer-Seller Meets being held across states to boost procurement from SC/ ST entrepreneurs

New Delhi, Dec 8 (KNN) In order to enhance procurement from the SC/ ST entrepreneurs, the National SC/ ST Hub, under the Ministry of MSME, is actively organizing Vendor Development Programmes across different states.

National SC/ ST Hub recently organized the State Level Vendor Development Programmes in different places including Cochin, Jaipur etc.

Under the Vendor Development Programmes, the micro entrepreneurs and artisans are explained how to compete with the modern industries and improve quality of their products.

The awareness is also created on various government schemes and policies for them.

Industry body DICCI earlier this week organized a Buyer Seller Meet in Bhubaneswar. During the meet, 17 buyer entrepreneurs from SC/ST category and 2 seller companies from TATA groups participated in the meet.

Addressing the meet, Founder & Chairman of DICCI, Milind Kamble spoke about optimum utilization of allocated fund by the hub for the benefit and development of entrepreneurs.

Talking to KNN, President of Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DICCI), Kamble, said DICCI came up with the idea of National SC/ST hub to achieve 4 percent procurement target for SC/ ST entrepreneurs and for their capacity building.

He said it is a routine programme. “Two months back we had organized it in Pune for western region before that we organized it in the Bangalore for southern region in the same row it was the third Buyer-Seller Meet in this financial year. And next is coming up on December 31 for northern region,” he said.

Elaborating on this, he said the Buyer-Seller Meet is different from Vendor Development Programme (VDP).

“Buyer-Seller Meet is privately organized and has nothing to do with the government,” he said.

He said that Buyer-Seller Meet was organized in Bhubaneswar by CII & DICCI for eastern region of DICCI, near about 25000 thousand SC/ST entrepreneur those who are members of DICCI and near about 15 members of CII participated. In this programme we invited NSIC and MSMEs for the presentations.

The National SC/ ST Hub was launched by PM Modi in Ludhiana on October 18 with the view to monitor the procurement from SC/ ST MSMEs which currently is just 0.3 per cent of the required 4 per cent target.

Kamble is the Chairman of Advisory Council of the National SC/ ST Hub.

Under the National SC/ ST Hub, the institutions like NSIC, NEDFI, State level SC-ST marketing organisations & others would help create consortiums of SC-ST suppliers.

The creation of consortiums would enable small SC/ ST suppliers to participate in medium and large tenders of CPSEs and Central Ministries.

Under the hub, a Management Information System (MIS) would be created which would monitor the performance of CPSEs/ Central Ministries in fulfilling their annual public procurement target from SC/ ST entrepreneurs. (KNN/ RAS)