A total of 50 artisan-based SFURTI clusters have been inaugurated by Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises Minister Nitin Gadkari. These clusters are spread over 18 States. The scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries (SFURTI) is a scheme to provide financial support for promoting traditional industries.
Key Points
- In these SFURTI clusters, more than 42000 artisans have been supported in the traditional segments of handicraft, khadi, muslin, handlooms, coir, pottery, carpet weaving, bamboo, woodcraft, leather, tea, agro-processing, and others.
- These SFURTI clusters have been inaugurated in 18 states. These states are- Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Odisha, Jharkhand, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Arunachal Pradesh, and West Bengal.
- Funding of Rs 85 crore has been provided by the MSME Ministry for the development of these SFURTI clusters.
- The Centre is implementing the SFURTI to organize artisans and traditional industries into clusters to increase their income as well as to make them competitive.
As per MSME Minister, more research is needed on what kinds of village products are required by the consumers, and how to attractively design and market these products. He also suggested that the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad can be approached for the improvement in the design and attractiveness of traditional products. Along with this, a web portal similar to Amazon or Alibaba is also needed to market these traditional products both in India and abroad. The Minister also highlighted that there is a need to increase the pace of formation of such clusters since by far only 82 clusters out of the 371 announced are actually functional.
