Union Budget 2025: Retail trade body Retailers Association of India (RAI) has called for measures to provide low-cost finance for retailers in the next year’s budget to be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in February. In its list of recommendations for the upcoming union budget, RAI said there is a need to provide lower interest rates to the retailers through the special announcement in the budget to ensure easier financing for the Retail businesses.
“The government should allocate a special fund and formulate a special trader finance scheme with SIDBI to help millions of independent retailers across the nation by declaring low-cost loans and relaxing some industry guidelines,” the association said.
Currently, retail and wholesale traders, who were included under the MSME definition in July 2021 and were allowed to register on the Udyam portal, are eligible for access to credit only under priority sector lending norms.
RAI said the government should extend all other benefits under Udyam certification offered to MSMEs to retail and wholesale traders as well.
Benefits other than credit access available to Udyam-registered MSMEs are multiple number of activities including manufacturing or service or both can be specified or added in one registration, units can register on portals such as public procurement platform GeM (Government eMarketplace), delayed payment monitoring portal Samadhaan, and invoice discounting platform TReDS, etc.
The association also made other requests viz., lowering taxes to boost the overall consumer sentiment, considering the F&B retail sector as a priority and an essential service, expediting national retail policy to enable ease of doing business, reintroducing EPCG (export promotion capital goods) scheme for retail sector to create modern infrastructure, free or subsidized dispensation of EDC (electronic data capturing) machines to boost acceptance of digital payments, and more.
The retail sector accounts for around 10 per cent of India’s GDP (gross domestic product). The market is estimated to grow from around $1 trillion currently to $2 trillion by 2032.