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India's Ministry of Industries and Commerce said that a Challenge fund has been set up with a corpus of Rs.5 crores, under the Market Access Initiative or MAI scheme for export promotion activities by Indian Missions abroad.
The MAI scheme of the Department of Commerce is an export promotion scheme aimed to act as a catalyst to promote India's export on a sustainable basis. Since, Indian Missions abroad are also eligible for assistance under the scheme, the fund has been created under the same.
The MAI will focus on the markets, which in turn will focus upon product export promotion activities including innovative market promotion projects to showcase the Indian export capabilities. Priority will be given to projects relating to only market promotion activities; export promotion of new items in India's export baskets by way of market development and market penetration and export promotion initiatives for micro, small and medium enterprises with a stress on regions and countries where India has a small bilateral trade profile (Africa and Latin America). However, duplication of projects already implemented under the MAI/MDA scheme of the Commerce Ministry is prohibited.
The fund shall be used to finance specific export promotion schemes and projects, which envisage introduction of new items of export towards diversification of the Indian export basket in the host country.
Indian Missions shall propose these projects abroad. Each individual project has been assigned a budget of Rs.10 lakh. Priority shall be given to focused, specific projects with tangible results. The project proposals received shall be subjected to compete for funding on their merits.
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