Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship is important: Mukherjee

New Delhi, July 15 (IANS) Underlining that Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) is "extremely important" for India's socio-economic development of India, President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday congratulated it for its achievements in a short span of time.

The president also inaugurated the India Skills Competition here on the occasion of the World Youth Skills Day.

Mukherjee said that India is a young nation with 62 percent of its population in the working age group and more than 54 percent of the total population below 25 years of age, and "young minds are India's assets".

"This is our demographic dividend which we need to harness. As policy makers, we have a duty to empower our youth by providing skills to them. We need to seize this opportunity," he said in a statement.

He, however, cautioned that if they cannot provide jobs to the huge number of people entering the job market every year, the population dividend could turn into a population liability and this explosive situation has to be prevented.

The MSDE was created by Narendra Modi government in 2014.