The Union Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), Kalraj Mishra is expanding the coverage of the schemes and strengthening their implementation for the welfare of sector.

"The Ministry of MSME is laying thrust on the implementation of ongoing schemes/ programmes, which include National Manufacturing Competitiveness Programme, Credit Guarantee Scheme, Credit Linked Capital Subsidy Scheme, Performance and Credit Rating Scheme, Cluster Development Programme, Prime Minister’s Employment Generation programme, etc. for the promotion and development of MSMEs and to enhance their competitiveness and productivity," informed Mishra in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

Further, a workshop on virtual cluster was organized on 6th June, 2014 at the National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD) under Ministry of MSME, he added.

The objective of the workshop was to physically bring all the stakeholders together on a forum to discuss how to enrich MSME virtual cluster website and how to make it popular.

The workshop was attended by 57 participants. The participants were from Academic/Technical Institutions, Financial Institutions / Banks and Food Industry.

The workshop was able to achieve its objective in terms of bringing all the stakeholders which included prominent members from the Industry, Banks and Academia. The participants shared their experiences and exchanged suggestion on ways to arrive at possible solutions to the operational or procedural predicaments encountered from various quarters.

The workshop proved to be the right platform for promoting interactive working amongst them and the issues were discussed in details. Representatives present from the concerned sectors were able to appreciate the need to address mutual functional issues. This was in sync with the idea adjunct to the conceptualization of virtual clusters. The workshop has helped the virtual cluster website to gain more popularity, he added.