Narendra Modi led BJP today released its manifesto and while the traders’ community had a lot to rejoice, the ruling government has also taken steps to improve gender balanced workplaces. To encourage MSME’s (micro, small and medium enterprises) for hiring more women employees, the BJP has promised that the government will take steps to source supplies from MSMEs where at least half the workforce consists of women.
“To generate better work opportunities for women, 10% material to be sourced for government procurement will be done from MSMEs having at least 50% women employees in their workforce,” BJP manifesto said. It also gave an idea about the import substitutions that the government is looking to make. Items such as apparels, leather, paper and wood articles, stone items like idols, plastic and rubber items, furniture, clocks, toys etc will be sourced from such enterprises. However, the list is not exhaustive.
Traders’ body welcomed the move. Praveen Khandelwal, General Secretary of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) told Financial Express Online that it is a welcome step by the government for the empowerment of women. He added that CAIT had demanded for more, but for now, 10% procurement is a good start.
Apart from women empowerment, BJP manifesto has much to offer for the trading community, which had earlier voiced their dissatisfaction with the FDI policy for e-commerce websites such as Flipkart and Amazon. Even though the issue still remains unaddressed, CAIT’s Praveen Khandelwal told Financial Express Online that it will continue to pressurise the government until their demands are met.
Meanwhile, the traders’ community has sent charters to various parties to raise their demands. “We have sent our charter to all political parties. And we will wait for the responses to analyze them before giving our mandate to traders on whom to vote,” Khandelwal added.
BJP’s manifesto has introduced credit guarantee scheme which ensures loans to MSMEs. The government has announced its plan to five times the current credit loan to Rs 1,00,000 crore by 2024. Also, with changes such as Kisan like credit cards for GST registered merchants, BJP has swayed the traders’ community to its side.
