Bhubaneswar: After empowering more than 70 lakh women under six lakh self-help groups in urban and rural areas across the state, Odisha under the leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is now poised to embark on a transformative journey of graduating Mission Shakti SHGs to small & medium enterprises (SMEs), a release issued by the Mission Shakti department of Odisha Government on Tuesday said.
In a presentation made by the department at the two-day Senior IAS Officers’ meet that got underway on Tuesday, the Mission Shakti department said that Naveen Patnaik has announced a number of initiatives to help women build big businesses and operate at scale and the department is confident to realise this vision. Some of the major initiatives are listed below:
The presentation highlighted that this year nearly Rs 10,000 crore will be disbursed to more than three lakh groups. Rs 200 crore of interest subvention amount is being disbursed directly to SHG accounts. Over the next five years, Rs 50,000 crore loan is targeted to be disbursed to SHGs and Rs 1200 crore has been provisioned for interest subvention benefits to SHGs.
The Government of Odisha has a unique model of outsourcing government procurements and provisioning services worth Rs 5,000 crore in five years. Fifteen departments are actively participating in the areas of hospital diet management, electricity meter reading, pisciculture, urban works, nursery raising in forests and so on. Handing over all 5T schools to federations for watch and ward and maintenance activities with in-built supervision charges for SHGs is another major initiative of the department, the release read.
According to the presentation of the Mission Shakti department, training is an important component of building SMEs. The department aims to cover all blocks in the state with high-quality training with credible partners. The focus will be on emerging areas of beauty sector enterprises, fashion design, agri entrepreneurship, cafe management, and hospitality sector services.
The department also plans to focus on marketing – the Mission Shakti Bazaar, which is an exclusive chain of retail stores for SHG products. Mission Shakti Bazaar will be set up in 500 locations across the state with a state of art boutique store in Bhubaneswar opening soon. Three hundred SHGs and PGs have been identified for onboarding to Flipkart, the release read.
A few examples of successful women-led businesses at the district level were also presented at the Senior IAS Officers’ meeting today, including the mini industrial parks for women covering 310 acres in 12 GPs of Borigumma in Koraput district. The district has leveraged funds from many programmes for these units housed in one location. The fly ash brick unit alone has a turnover of Rs 5 crore.
Similarly, Kendrapara district has started Milk Shakti to procure and sell milk from Mission Shakti SHGs. The SHGs there have also started a unique e-auto programme with women owners and drivers of electronic autos. The overall vision is to set up at least 50,000 SMEs in the next three years, the presentation claimed.
