SHILLONG: The Chief Minister’s Entrepreneur’s Conclave under the theme ‘Business and Enterprise Opportunities in Meghalaya’ was held at Pinewood Hotel here on Tuesday.
Addressing the gathering Chief Minister Mukul M Sangma said the conclave provides a space to listen to entrepreneurs and work together. “Such conclaves enable us to sit together and explore the opportunities and potentials available in our backyard, learning from each other and to format them appropriately to ensure sustainable livelihood opportunities so that the citizens of Meghalaya have a sense of well being”, he said.
Sangma also urged both the successful and the aspiring to partner with the government and to utilise Meghalaya Institute of Entrepreneurship (MIE) as an instrument for skill building, technology up gradation, access to finance and markets and to develop value chains to their products.
The MIE is the nodal institution in the State for facilitating economic transformation through entrepreneurship education and promotion of micro enterprises involving youth, women and other critical target groups. MIE strives to be amongst the best in the area of entrepreneurship creation and promotion, innovation and application of skills, technologies through harnessing of the rich potential of promising sectors while focusing on Apiculture, Agriculture, Horticulture, Floriculture, Pisciculture, Aromatic and medicinal plantations, Animal Husbandry, nonfarm enterprises and other locally viable, remunerative income generating activities.
With a view to sensitise entrepreneurs and promote wider participation in the value chains being created under various missions under IBDLP, the one-day conclave was organised to network and interact with established and budding entrepreneurs of the six districts of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills to make them aware of the opportunities that exist around these missions and of the enterprise ecosystem that the government is putting in place to promote livelihoods through business. Such conclaves will also be held in Garo Hills in the coming days.
The conclave featured sessions on enterprise sharing by local entrepreneurs, presentations by experts on processing, food safety, legal metrology and also an open house where entrepreneurs got to interact and ask questions from domain experts.