West Bengal government is looking to come up with a start-up policy to facilitate the growth and development of the start-up ecosystem in the State.

According to Rajesh Pandey, Principal Secretary, MSME and Textiles, West Bengal, the State government is in talks with various stakeholders and is hopeful of coming up with a start-up policy soon.

“West Bengal had a start-up policy between 2013 and 2018. But that has lapsed and so we are working on coming up with a new policy and are in talks with stakeholders for the same,” Pandey told newspersons on the sidelines of an event organised by The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry on the occasion of World MSME Day here on Tuesday.

The State government has been taking several initiatives to support the MSMEs, which is a huge employment generator. It had recently rolled out the Bhabishyat scheme in the last State Budget to provide collateral free loans to MSMEs.

It plans to support two lakh MSME units under the scheme each year for the next five years. Availability of funding support is one of the biggest challenge confronting the MSMEs at present, he said.

“As many as 70,000 applications has been received under the scheme so far and nearly one-third of it has been processed for collateral free loans. Some of the banks have onboarded this scheme and we are hopeful of achieving the target (of reaching out to two lakh units) this year,” he said.

This apart, the State government is also further enhancing the ease of doing business norms for MSMEs to ensure speedy approvals.

Dun & Bradstreet India has partnered with the West Bengal government to issue D-U-N-S® Numbers to exporters and MSMEs in the State.

The D-U-N-S® Number is a unique nine-digit identifier for businesses and is assigned once the company’s patented identity resolution process identifies a company as being unique from any other in the Dun & Bradstreet Data Cloud. It helps identify, validate, and link businesses worldwide. Potential partners and lenders can request a business credit report about the business using its D-U-N-S Number.