Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have emerged as an engine of growth in several developed and developing economies of the world. In India also, they have emerged as a vibrant and dynamic component of the economy by virtue of their significant contribution to GDP, industrial production and exports. However, the most important contribution of this sector is towards employment generation which is second only to agriculture. The experience of recent years shows that while employment in agriculture sector has been declining, large industries are also experiencing jobless growth. In such a situation, the main responsibility for job creation rests with unorganized sector including small and medium enterprises and the service sector. Considering its potential and ability, the SMEs sector has been assigned a target of 12 per cent annual growth and additional employment of 4.4 million persons. However, some of the recent developments emerging out of the challenges of increased competitiveness due to dlobalisation, liberalization and emergence of WTO, and the constraints relating to credit, infrastructure, technology and skill development, many experts are compelled to think about the capacity of this sector to achieve the given targets. The main objective of this book is to examine the constraints and the required changes which could convert the challenges to opportunities so that the SMEs sector emerges as the saviour of the Indian economy in terms of employment generation. The sector has inherent advantage of flexibility and innovativeness and its major constraints of access to economies of scales could be overcome if the strategy of SMEs development is changed to cluster development and formulation of appropriate policies for the service sector. Besides, the focus has to shift to innovative financing, technology development and improvement of productivity. This book examines all these issues and attempts to suggest measures which would enhance the competitiveness of SMEs in order to enable this sector to put India on global map.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR C.S. Prasad
Dr. C.S. Prasad, who has recently retired from the post of Additional Development Commissioner and Economic Adviser in the office of Development Commissioner (Small Scale Industries), Ministry of Small Scale industries, Government of India, New Delhi, had been associated with the small and Medium Enterprises sector for over 25 years. Dr. Prasad had the opportunity to watch the performance of this sector by virtue of his various postings in the Government of India. He has also been instrumental informulation of Policies, programmes and schemes for the promotion and development of this sector and also their implementation. He was closely associated with the formulation of the Credit Guarantee Scheme and the successful conduct of the Third All India Census of Small Scale Industries in the Country. Dr. Prasad Had also been member and Chairman of various committees constituted for the promotion of small enterprises. Dr.Prasad, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics, belonged to Indian Economic Service which he joined in 1969. As a Member of IES, he held important posts in the Planning Commission, and Union Ministries of Industry, Agriculture, Defence, Home Affairs, Finance, and Small Scale Industries. He had been Economic adviser in the Office of DCSSI from October 1992 to August 1995, and Additional Development Commissioner and Economic Adviser from August 1995 to June 2004. Dr. Prasad had also been closely associated with teaching and academic world. Apart from his earlier stint as Lecturer of Economics in Bhagalpur University from 1964 to 1967, he worked as Professor and Head of the Department of Economics at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussories, from 1981 to 1988. Dr. Prasad has authored a book titled State Taxation in India which was published in 1997. Besides, he has contributed over hundred articles, quite a large number of them on the subject of Small and Medium Enterprises. Dr, Prasad has visited a number of countries and attended a large number of international conferences on SMEs sector, representing India in those conferences.
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