The Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry of South Africa Elizabeth Thabathe alongwith her officials called upon the Indian Minister for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, Virbhadra Singh here on Monday and expressed her desire for cooperation with India and conveyed the greetings of the South African PresidentJacob Zuma to the Indian people.

Singh welcomed the visiting dignitaries and assured full co-operation for the development of MSME sector in both countries. He also said that MSME was one of the most important sector contributing to Indian economy. It was because of this that an exclusive Ministry for overseeing the development of this sector was set up.

South African Minister informed that National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) of India has a presence in the South Africa and has been extending full cooperation to the South African Government and has also been advising their counterpart entity the Small Industry Development Agency (SIDA) from the past several years.

She said that her objective was to enhance the bilateral relation between the two countries and in this regard, she would like to send a business delegation to participate in the forthcoming Techmart being organized by NSIC under the aegis of India International Trade Fair in November, 2011. She expressed her desire to collaborate with Indian MSME sector in view of the tremendous work done by India in this sector. She briefly gave the background of South African small business sector.

Singh assured the South African Minister that NSIC would provide all the necessary support to the South African MSMEs.

Secretary (MSME), Uday Kumar Varma suggested that for having a meaningful dialogue and institutional mechanism, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Indian and South Africa in the MSME sector would prove to be beneficial. In addition, he said that there should be a follow up meeting to concretize the steps to be taken for future course of action. In this regard, it was decided that an official level meeting between the two countries should be held at the earliest.