Tamil Nadu

70 entrepreneurs meet to learn from Indian SME experience

— Photo: M. Vedhan

IN DEEP THOUGHT: (From left) A.C. Jose, Chairman, Coir Board, Surjit Singh Barnala, Tamil Nadu Governor, and Jose Maurel, Director, Special Advisory Services Division, Commonwealth Secretariat, at a function in Chennai on Sunday.

CHENNAI: Theresa Arek is a small entrepreneur from Papua New Guinea, starting export of spices and essential oils. She is in Chennai to learn the tricks of the trade from Indian entrepreneurs, who have been selling spices across the world for centuries.

“Spice trading is very new in Papua New Guinea. So this will be a learning experience for me here in India. After all, this is where the spice route originally began…You are also pioneering in rural entrepreneurship. I want to take that back home,” she said, on the sidelines of the eighth edition of the Commonwealth-India Small Business Competitiveness Development Programme, which began here on Sunday.

Ms. Arek is one of the 70 entrepreneurs, development institutional representatives and policymakers from 27 Commonwealth countries to learn from the experience of Indian small and medium enterprises, besides sharing their own expertise.

Governor Surjit Singh Barnala, who inaugurated the programme, said small and medium enterprises had played vital social and economic roles in India’s development.

“They are a source of employment to millions, both in urban and rural India…They have offered opportunity to millions of our people to come out of the poverty trap.”

In a recorded video message, Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma said: “India can teach development lessons across the diversity of the Commonwealth.”

“The SME sector has the potential to equitably distribute the benefits of economic growth” and counter the charges of inequity that were levelled against globalisation, said Jose Maurel, director of the special advisory services division at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

One SME sector with high potential to spur growth and development in many Commonwealth nations is the coir industry.

Coir Board chairman A.C. Jose said many countries in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean have vast, untapped groves of coconut palms. “They produce a lot of coconuts, but they have no value-added products. Most of them have never even heard of coir,” he said, pointing out that the small industry employed millions across India, with 85 per cent of workers being women, and also earns Rs.600-Rs. 700 crore in foreign exchange every year.

After the sixth edition of the programme in Cochin, a coir institute was set up in South Africa, with the assistance and advice of the Coir Board.

It is helping to produce geo-textiles for the mining industry there.

The board is now offering to provide technical assistance to, or enter into a commercial partnership with, any Commonwealth country interested in starting an SME coir sector.

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