Orissa announces Rs 40 crore package for handicraft development

Bhubaneswar, Feb 06 (UNI) Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today announced a Rs 40 crore package for the development of handicraft in the state.

The Chief Minister announced the package after presiding over a high level meeting convened here to find out ways to develop and promote handicrafts.

The meeting also resolved to issue Photo identity cards to artisans and set up a fund for their welfare.

Official sources said the meeting decided to set up a modern packaging centre, a handicraft excellence centre in the capital city and revive the handicraft museum.

An international marketing assistance centre to augment exports and an laboratory for metal handicrafts would be set up at Bhubaneswar.

This apart a detail list of traditional handicrafts would be prepared, dying handicrafts revived and an integrated handicraft centre at Kenduli in Khurda district would be established The meeting accorded top priority to infrastructure development, marketing, loan assistance, development of new design, quality and training and decided to impart better training to the artisans for their capacity building.

As per the decision every year training would be imparted to two thousand artisans while arrangements would be made to provide margin money to three thousand artisans to avail bank loan.

Official sources said arrangements would be made to send five hundreds artisans to different places of the country to gain first hand knowledge.

Assistance to Self help Groups to open their own sales centre, setting up of training and design development centres at Balasore, Rayagada and Sambalpur, supply of raw material for handicrafts and setting up of workshop and assistance centre in handicraft clusters were the other decisions taken at the meeting.

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