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Mr. Sudhanwa Kopardekar With Mr. Douglas Wallace and
Ms. Jennifer Gothard, Commercial Officers at San Francisco
U.S. Export Assistance Centre, USA
of the Senator and House of Representative's office, and
many other important organizations. In San Francisco
there were meetings with Vice Mayor of the City of Napa,
promoter of a Winery in Napa Valley, a venture capitalist
and veteran IT Industry, Director at the San Francisco
Mayor's Office of International Trade and Commerce.
Interaction with officials at Federal Trade Commission's
division of Privacy and Identity Protection, U.S. Export
Assistance Centre, San Francisco Global Trade Council,
Bay Area Council Economic Institute and Port of San
Francisco was extremely useful.
In Des Moines the group visited the highly mechanised
and computerized farms and held meetings with officials
of Iowa Economic Development Authority, Iowa
Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Iowa
Farm Bureau Federation and John Deere Financial. The
Group also visited Saturday Farmers Market.
In New York, participants got a very good insight into the
service industry and export-import business through
meetings with senior officials of American Association of
Exporters and Importers, Citi Bank, KPMG, Metlife and
New York Mercantile Exchange.
MCCIA’s SME Excellence Center at Bhosari
Small and medium enterprises have emerged as one of
the key sectors for employment generation and overall
economic development of our country.
Pune has had a long history and tradition of competitive
and progressive SMEs, right from the 1940s, since the
city began to develop as a manufacturing and
automobile industry hub. MCCIA, has always been at the
forefront of initiatives and activities aimed at supporting
SMEs in skill and knowledge development and
providing them with all kinds of interventions
th
78 Annual Report 2011-12
MAHRATTA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, INDUSTRIES AND AGRICULTURE
12
that promote opportunity and growth. Indeed, even
today a large number of MCCIA members belong to the
SME sector.
In its latest endeavour to add value to SMEs, MCCIA has
inaugurated the ‘MCCIA – Navalmal Firodia Center of
Excellence’, which will expand the scope of activities of
its Pimpri Chinchwad branch.
This SME Excellence Centre will cater to the various
needs of the SME segment. The Centre will include a
specialized credit advisory services cell, export finance
and facilitation centre, mini tool room, library, capacity
development and training facility, conference halls,
facilitation centre with a facility to interact with the
government departments and officials, cafeteria. The
Centre also currently houses an SME banking branch of a
major nationalized bank.
The objective of this centre is to enhance the capability
and capacity of the SMEs in Pune region in terms of
global competitiveness. This centre has been created in
the SME hub of Maharashtra, the Bhosari Industrial
cluster which also happens to be the SME capital of the
country.
Capability enhancement encompasses all the
operational areas such as Marketing, Finance,
Technology and the most important Production and
Manufacturing. The centre will strive to create
awareness about state of the art technology, business
environment as well as government policies and
regulations. Skills enhancement programs would be a
regular feature of the centre’s activities. Besides it
would operate as a dedicated cell for promoting and
establishing lean manufacturing practices, export
identification and enhancement programs and all other
related areas which would make the SMEs of Pune region
highly competitive in the global environment.
MCCIA Bhosari - ‘Navalmal Firodia Center for Excellence’