New Delhi, Feb 3 (IANS): Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday that the economy has entered into a phase of consolidation after a series of "structural reforms" which were initiated in the past two years.

"... Having gone through a series of very major structural reforms in the past two years, this now also is a phase for consolidation as far as the economy is concerned," Jaitley said at an event here.

According to Jaitley, this phase of "consolidation" will be led by the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector.

Speaking on the launch of "CriSidEx" which is India's first sentiment index for the MSEs developed jointly by Crisil and Sidbi, Jaitley said: "The health of this sector (MSME) is extremely vital to the economy and we are increasingly seeing that with a number of steps taken an increased integration of the sector into the formal economy itself..."

"... This is one sector, where people not only exhibit their entrepreneurial skills, become part of large value chains, but they also become job creators in the process and that's the reason why a bulk of the jobs in manufacturing, trading have been credited in this particular sector."

CriSidEx is based on a diffusion index of eight parameters, and measures MSE business sentiment on a scale of "0 (extremely negative) to 200 (extremely positive)".