Dubai Like Mega Shopping Festivals In India From March 2020 For Global Exposure To Indian Artisans, MSMEs

In a bid to boost demand for domestically produced goods among the national and international masses, Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman announced yesterday (14 September) that India will be organising an annual mega shopping festival in four Indian cities on the lines of massive Dubai Shopping Festival, reports Asian News International (ANI).

Sitharaman said that the host cities would be identified by the Ministry for Corporate Affairs and that the theme for the festival in each city would be different and pan across sectors like gems and jewellery, yoga, textiles, tourism and leather.

The announcement of the mega shopping festivals is expected to give a big push to the MSME sector whose offerings are likely to get major exposure and traction through the initiative. The first-ever such festival is expected to be held by March 2020.

Sitharaman also announced that handicrafts and textile artists would be directly on-boarded on the Government of India run e-commerce platform called GeM. The move would be accomplished in partnership with the Ministry for textiles and would help in mass-onboarding of such artisans across India.