The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Nagaland State Council observed that substantial fund had been allocated to MSME, and skilling & employment sectors in the Union Budget 2024-25 presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament on Tuesday, encouraging Nagaland to leverage these funds.
Dwelling on how the Union Budget allocation could benefit Nagaland, CII Nagaland State Council members told Nagaland Post that the allocation could make remarkable impact in the state.
They stressed creating robust skill development programmes in line with state’s needs, maintaining that by doing so Nagaland could equip its youth with skills to increase their employability and for economic self-reliance.
Dwelling specifically on employment, they proposed a comprehensive scheme for providing internship opportunities in top 50 companies of the country to the nation’s around one crore youth in the next five years.
They maintained that the youth would gain exposure for 12 months to real life business environment, varied professions and employment opportunities, while also getting an internship allowance of Rs 5,000 per month, and a onetime of assistance of Rs 6,000, with the companies bearing the cost of training, and 10% of the internship cost from CSR funds.
The members pointed out that a huge section of the youth would benefit from such opportunities, stressing that this would aid them to gain high quality work experience, further aiding them in their professional growth.
Acknowledging that there were no specifics in terms of how to avail this opportunity in the Union Budget, they assured that CII Nagaland State Council leverage the platform to better understand the channels in which the youth could benefit, understand its funding structure, financial breakdown of such opportunities, and how this could be leveraged to ensure that the youth in Nagaland too could take advantage.
On budget allocation for MSMEs, the members referred to Sitharaman’s statement that the Central government would launch credit guarantee programme for the industry, enabling term loans without collaterals, or third-party guarantees.
For a state like Nagaland, they viewed this as a great relief for many MSMEs looking to avail bank loans, claiming that many business owners would now be able to avail these loans with ease.
They claimed that the CII had made efforts to conduct workshops to improve financial literacy in the state, hoping to conduct more such workshops in the future.
They pointed out that SIDBI would open 24 new branches in the state to support MSME clusters, while public sector banks would build in-house capacity for credit assessment of MSMEs. They said the Centre had also announced setting up 100 branches of India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) in the north-eastern states.
Interacting with this reporter, prominent entrepreneur and CII Nagaland State Council member Maj (Dr) Mughavi Sema maintained that Nagaland could benefit from the budgetary allocation for several other schemes and sectors. He said this included three core housing units under PM Awas Yojana, one crore rooftop solar panels, allocation of Rs 3 lakh crore for woman & child development, tourism development, fund for organised street vendors, etc.
The CII works to create and sustain an environment conducive to development of India, partnering industry, government and civil society, through advisory and consultative processes.
It is a non-governmental, non-profit, industry-led and industry-managed organisation with members from both private and public sectors, including SMEs and MNCs, from 294 national and regional sectoral industry bodies. Other members present include CII Nagaland State Council chairperson Hokhuli Sema.