The SFURTI scheme is an initiative started by the Indian government’s Ministry of MSME to promote the development of clusters in India. The scheme was launched in 2005 and is still active and prevalent to date.
The scheme revolves around the local working class and businesses of India that work in traditional industries. This scheme provides them with immense economic benefits and support to enrich their lives significantly.
Let us find out what SFURTI scheme is, its benefits, how the application process works, and who is eligible for it.
What is SFURTI Scheme?
The full form of SFURTI is Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries. SFURTI scheme was launched in 2005 by the Indian government’s Ministry of MSME to promote the development of clusters in India.
The main motive of the SFURTI scheme is to ensure that the various traditional clusters of industries spread throughout the country of India are met with amenities and benefits that help them become more competitive in the industry and gain larger revenue in profits.
A large part of India’s working industry works in these traditional industries and the scheme targets these industries to increase their productivity and become economically sustainable. The scheme facilitates this by establishing CFCs, or Common Facility Centers, near the industries and generating employment opportunities for the workers.
The scheme targets several important sectors such as the bamboo industry, honey industry, and khadi industry. This assists traditional artisans, local workers, and local entrepreneurs by supporting their business substantially.
The scheme aims to achieve various core objectives such as –
- Organizing the various clusters of traditional industry workers and artisans to ensure they are competitive and facilitate support and assistance for their livelihood.
- Providing economically sustained employment for the industry’s various workers, local business heads, and rural artisans.
- Advancing and enhancing the market value and advertising value of products provided by local clusters. This is done by providing economic and financial support for the worker or artisan’s new products, intervening in the design process and remedying it, improving the packaging of the product, and ensuring a sound marketing plan for the product.
Benefits of SFURTI Scheme
There are several important benefits to the SFURTI scheme that each beneficiary who avails of the scheme should necessarily know about.
- The scheme helps the local and traditional artisans of the rural parts of India in the various associated clusters to improve their skills and manufacturing capabilities so that they achieve better employment and economic success. This is done via special training and several exposure visits.
- The SFURTI scheme initiates actual provisions for facilities as well as centers. It provides an improved set of equipment tools to artisans and workers to improve their product and service quality. Indirectly, the scheme ensures maximum utilization for various facilities available at an artisan’s disposal.
- The system governing the clusters has active participation of its stakeholders. These stakeholders actively look for market opportunities in these clusters, which in turn ensures the economic growth of the respective clusters.
- The scheme helps generate cluster-based industries in the sub-divisional regions of a district. This helps local workers and rural artisans create helpful and innovative skills that help them create new business plans, improve the technologies involved, upgrade the level of processes, and give the workers a sense of market intelligence that helps them create new marketing partnerships.
- The scheme helps create an economically sustainable business ecosystem that supplies a wide array of products featuring an integrated value chain of its own. The scheme also has a market catering approach to creating products and services that ensure the longevity of the cluster-based industries.
- The scheme ensures the integration of the various artisans and workers in the clusters to form united operations and business formations that facilitate a total growth of the region as a whole.
- The scheme helps artisans and workers create and market products that target the actual current consumer market and serve their needs. This helps them organize their otherwise disorganized product lines into a cumulative product line that is unified with the cluster’s total artisan force to create products with maximum value.
- The scheme recognizes E-commerce as one of the best business channels for business growth and marketing for pitching the business and products of local artisans to a wider market. The scheme devises a meticulous plan especially to ensure that the local artisans have their products and services become well-known and reputed in the online space of the E-commerce industry.
What Industries are Covered by the SFURTI Scheme?
The SFURTI scheme covers a variety of industries, sectors, and individuals. These are –
- Artisans
- Artisan guilds cooperatives
- Workers
- Raw material providers
- Local entrepreneurs
- PDS providers
- Self-Help Groups (SHGs)
- Machinery makers
SFURTI Scheme Application Process
If you wish to apply for the SFURTI scheme and get a loan for your business, service, or products, you are necessarily required to complete and submit a proposal to the State Office and KVIC of your region. Then, the proposal and request are considered and checked thoroughly by the State level and Zonal level offices for integrity.
If the document passes under their verification for its authenticity, it is finally sent to the Scheme Steering Committee for finalized approval. After approval, the loan is granted to the user.
Eligibility for SFURTI Scheme
Selecting which clusters get chosen is an essential part of the eligibility process of the SFURTI scheme. These clusters are primarily chosen on the basis of their geographical concentration within, or in proximity, of a revenue sub-divisional area in the district. The concentration needs to be around 500 beneficiary families or individuals who are artisans, entrepreneurs, raw material suppliers, local service providers, etc., in the sub-divisional area.
The chosen clusters come from various different industries such as khadi, coir, and village including, but not limited to, leather and pottery. The production growth and employment opportunities will be closely supervised under these clusters by the scheme. What’s more is that the clusters from the Northeastern regions such as Assam, Sikkim, Nagaland, etc., need to have at least a bare minimum of 10% distribution in the total consideration for the scheme while selecting proper clusters.
Subsidy from the SFURTI Scheme
The subsidies you get from the SFURTI scheme depend on the amount of grant that your cluster has received. A maximum budget of Rs. 8 crores is allotted to the densest clusters in a district which is then lowered as the clusters get thinner and sparse.
Let us find out the maximum financial benefits you can gain from the scheme –
- The densest clusters, also called heritage clusters, with individual workers, entrepreneurs, and artisans of up to 1000 to 2500 in number, have a budget limit of Rs. 8 crores.
- The heavily dense clusters, also called significant clusters, with individual workers, artisans, and entrepreneurs of about 500-1000 in number, have a budget limit of Rs. 3 crores.
- The smallest clusters, also called mini clusters, with individual workers, entrepreneurs, and rural artisans of up to 500 in number, have a budget limit of Rs. 1.5 crore.
- If the cluster’s region belongs to NER/Jammu, Ladakh, Kashmir, and the numerous Hill States, then there would be a reduction of about 50% in the number of artisans per cluster.
Conclusion
The SFURTI scheme is one of the most important schemes for the local working class of India that don’t have sufficient economical benefits and advantages to succeed as a business in their line of work. We hope this guide was insightful for you regarding the various details of the scheme and if it was, consider following our website for regular updates as it will help us immensely.
