By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Chief Minister Dr Mukul Sangma on Wednesday laid focus on investment to economically empower eighty per cent of the State’s population who are involved in the agrarian trade.
Addressing a state-level workshop on National Mission on Food Processing (NMFP) organised by the Commerce and Industries Department with the support of the Ministry of Food Processing here in the city, Dr Sangma said, “It makes sense that we focus our investment towards empowering this 80 per cent of the population.”
Dr Sangma said that in the past a number of attractive programmes sponsored by different ministries of the Central Government had been initiated for the State designed to build partnerships and create an enabling environment for all the potential partners. “We could not make the best use of these programmes because the State Government also had to create an enabling environment to be able to utilize these platforms and available schemes and to create successful entrepreneurs,” he said.
“Our Khasis, Garos and Jaintias are not risk takers,” Dr Sangma said while adding that this is a reason why we see so few entrepreneurs in the State.
The Chief Minister said that in the absence of potential partners who can be groomed into becoming entrepreneurs, the programmes and schemes would fail to achieve the desired results.
