Mumbai, April 23 : Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) on Saturday said it has provided the first approval under SIDBI Cluster Development Fund (SCDF) of Rs 600 crore to the Maharashtra government to meet the growing demand for skilled manpower. SIDBI, the principal financial institution engaged in the promotion, financing, and development of MSMEs, has accorded an in-principle approval for an amount of Rs 600 crore for reviving and upgrading various ITIs and Polytechnics, being run by the Directorate of Vocational Education and Training under the Department of Skills, Employment, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, it said in a statement issued here. “These ITIs and polytechnics complement the MSME clusters in the state through availability of properly trained skilled manpower through hands-on skill training, which is the demand of the MSMEs,” it said. The demand for skilled manpower in Maharashtra has sharply increased due to newly launched schemes of the central government namely Make in India, Digital India, Smart Cities and Clean India Mission. These ITIs are getting ready to take up the new task and would play an important role for meeting the skilled manpower demand of the MSMEs generated through these new schemes, SIDBI added. Commenting on the development, Sivasubramanian Ramann, IA&AS, Chairman and Managing Director of SIDBI said, “The active participation of state government run institutions through their upgradation and revival, in the journey of MSME development, will provide necessary impetus to fulfilling the much desired need of availability skilled manpower of the MSME ecosystem and shall facilitate achieving a higher efficiency by the system.” The Expert Committee on MSMEs headed by UK Sinha has recommended a more focused engagement of SIDBI with state governments for MSME development and promotion including use of priority sector shortfall (PSS) funds to create a low-cost lending window for state governments for infrastructure projects in clusters. Accordingly, SIDBI has set up project management ts (PMUs) in 11 states namely, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujrat, Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu. SCDF has been setup with support of RBI to support the hard infrastructure facilities in clusters pan India. The fund is envisaged to support setting up, upgrading and renovation of MSME infrastructure in areas other than agriculture, it said. The major sectors include industrial and agri-allied sectors in the MSME eco-space, social sector projects in and around MSME clusters and connectivity to MSME clusters. SIDBI has already accorded an in-principal sanction of more than Rs 5968 crore for the development and upgradation of various industry cluster projects to various state governments and on Territories across the country. PSK SY 1244