Mercy Epao is Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises. Prior to the current posting, she has served Govt. of India in various capacities across the Ministries/ Departments for the past 25 years. Some of her important postings inter alia are Ministries of Finance, Housing & Urban Affairs and Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER)etc. During her service, she handled different subjects viz. Agriculture and Allied Sector in DoNER, externally aided projects for the NER, Pay related matters, Cadre review of All India Service (AIS), works related HR and Administration. She is a Post Graduate from Delhi University. As Joint Secretary she is in charge of implementation of various Schemes pertaining to Small and Medium Enterprises. Some Schemes are the National SC/ST Hub Scheme, which is dedicated to support SC/ST entrepreneurs. The International Co-operation Scheme entails her to tie-up / negotiate / interact and enable MoUs / FTAs/ sharing and exchanging of best practices in the SME sector with other countries. M/o MSME participates in Bilateral and Multilaterals Forums to strengthen the MSME sector through capacity building, technology intervention, G2G, B2B networking and exploring possible partnerships.