By Vivek Tripathi
Lucknow, Jun 2 (IANS): Vocal for Local, one district one product (ODOP) are the dream projects of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and steps are being taken to accelerate the projects. The Common Facility Centre (CFC) will play an important role in this.
The government intends to set up a common facility centre in every district. At present, the government has approved the establishment of 14 such centres at a cost of Rs 92 crore and 17 more centres are in the pipeline.
Problems related to the testing labs, design development centres, raw materials, common production, processing, logistics, packaging, levelling and barcoding, etc. will be solved at these ODOP centres. Ninety per cent cost of setting up these centres will be taken care by the government while the SPV will have to bear the remaining expenses. The maximum cost of a centre will be up to Rs 15 crore.
Notably, the ODOP is an innovative scheme started on the initiative of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. It aims to develop local and traditional products and skills in the state, economic prosperity at local level and development of micro, small and medium industries in the state. This will help locals in getting job at their hometown itself. This will also enable balanced development of the families and migration of labours will stop.
The problems of the entrepreneurs of every district are being sorted out by making an action plan. The problems identified so far include lack of capital, traditional outdated technology, less understanding about marketing and better packaging of products etc. The government is gradually solving every problem. For example, to overcome the shortage of capital, the government is giving large-scale loans to MSMEs linked with ODOP.
Recently, a loan of Rs 2,000 crore was given to about 57,000 entrepreneurs. Similar mega loan fairs will also be held in June, July and August. Apart from this, units linked with ODOP are being financed through state and Central government schemes like the PMGP, Chief Minister Yuva Swarojgar, ODOP funding, Mudra, Startup and Standup.
On the same lines, loans worth Rs 57,000 crore were distributed in the financial year 2018-19. The government has also signed an MoU with the Bank of Baroda in this regard. The NSE and BSE have also been tied up to enable these units to collect capital from the stock market.
A similar agreement has also been signed with the SIDBI for the venture capital fund. Agreements have also been signed with IIT Kanpur, AKTU, IIIT Allahabad, Indian Institute of Packaging, NIT, NID, QCI for quality, better designing and packaging of products.
In order to ensure that the manufacturers get better price for their goods provisions have been made to provide them platform at the national and international level exhibitions at concessional rates. An agreement has been signed with Amazon and agreements with Flipkart and Alibaba are under process.
Azamgarh, Unnao, Siddharthnagar, Sambhal, Ambedkarnagar, Agra, Moradabad, Bareilly, Saharanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi, Aligarh and Sitapur have got an approval for the CFCs.
Principal Secretary of Micro, Small and Medium Industries Navneet Sehgal said, "To encourage ODOP, action plan of every district is being addressed and the problems of the entrepreneurs there are being overcome. Problems that have been identified so far include lack of capital, traditional outdated technology, less market understanding and better packaging of products. The government is solving every problem respectively."