ODOP Scheme Giving Shape to Atmanirbhar UP, Says Navneet Sehgal

Lucknow: The One District One Product programme is aimed at creating an ‘atmanirbhar’ Uttar Pradesh, said Navneet Sehgal, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises and Export Promotion, as the keynote speaker at the ‘Uttar Pradesh Samvad’, a virtual meet organised by Elets under the aegis of Department of MSME and Export Promotion here on Wednesday.

“The ODOP programme launched by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is not only making the state prosper but also tremendously supporting the artisans in improving their livelihood,” he said. UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s ODOP Scheme Proves to Be Game Changer, Over 26 Lakh People Employed in 8 Months.

Highlighting the importance of MSMEs in Uttar Pradesh, Sehgal said that Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of MSMEs in the country with almost 14% of the total. “We have traditional industrial bases or clusters in the state which have been existing here for over a century. Thus, there has been a tradition of small scale industries in Uttar Pradesh, but unfortunately it has been ignored. Now, as a special campaign, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath introduced the ODOP scheme which aims at promoting the micro and small industries of a particular product to help them improve their productivity, profitability and also help the artisans in these clusters to improve their livelihood,” he said.

Citing the contribution of MSMEs in export, he said that these traditional industries contribute to almost 80% of our total export. “Our exports are increasing and these MSME products can compete with any other product in the world. The exports have risen in the last 2 years and there has been a jump of almost 38%, and 80% of these export are from artisan-based clusters,” he said.

“We have been working on each product and each district as a unit to create a kind of document about how these industries could be helped in raw material procurement, skilled labour availability and finance and designing besides packaging and marketing. This is a total campaign for shaping the atmanirbhar UP and give a boost to ‘vocal for local’,” he said.

As a strategy, we are also creating common facilities for the small units to improve their productivity and efficiency, he said while citing the example of Sambhal. “Artisans here make buttons out of animal bones and then they used to send it to China for polishing for later exporting it. But now the government is helping them get that machine from China in Sambhal. We have tied up with banks and also BSE and NSE to help the MSMEs raise money from the banks as well the market. Handholding the small companies to raise money from the market is a good option as the issues which they face in case of loan is not there in the case of equity,” he said.

“The state government has launched the MSME Saathi app which is linked with all the concerned banks and departments and now the MSMEs are contacting us about their problems through this app and they are being resolved as well,” said Sehgal.