‘West Bengal Needs a Lot of Catching Up In Adopting IT For Small Industries’

“Federation of Associations of Cottage & Small Industries- West Bengal” was brought into existence in 1972 to protect the Small Scale Industries from the stranglehold of the big industries. The indirect result of this process continued slowly and gradually made many of the SSI units sick. It is known to all that SSI industries have the potential of creating sizable employments for the unemployed youth throughout the country.

Hitanshu Kumar Guha President, Federation of Associations of Cottage and Small Industries (FACSI)

‘Bone of Contention’

“It is a well accepted fact that this sector is vital for generation of employment and regional balance by bringing in equal distribution of wealth amongst the large swathe of population,” begins HK Guha, President, FACSI. But, marketability of its products with remunerative pricing is also required. The Public Procurement Policy mandates 20% reservation of procurement by the Central Govt/CPSUs from MSMEs, where strong monitoring is required. Recently, one of the OIL PSUs, like Hindustan Petroleum has introduced upper price band with defined technical parameters, which is not conducive for competitive growth. That needs correction. Most importantly, financial assistance, especially bank loans to the MSMEs are still not easy. This needs further evaluation. The banking sectors is still an oligopoly where their discretion about fixation of Benchmark Prime Lending Rate (BPLR) prevails. This needs evaluation for MSME sector.

IT Challenges and Usage

“IT is the order of the day. Take the example of e-tender. Unless you use IT in your Unit, you are unable to participate. Similar is the case of banking operation, you need to be IT educated,” explained Guha. “We do not interfere to make ourselves aware of the modus operandi of our Members. We believe under the present scenario, they are handicapped, unless they adopt such operation through IT. It is relevant and necessary,” added Guha.

FACSI believes that there are certain Units where full-fledged IT operation is still difficult because of their aversion to adopt the same. This is because of the nature of business they do. “Still we believe they cannot forego the same totally as in the present scenario, they cannot survive without being updated with other collateral IT operations, said Guha.

“We have our own website. Computer operation is done in our day to day operation. We communicate through e mail. We do whatever is necessary to discharge our official function as far as practicable,” concluded Guha.