Financial assistance offered to MSMEs in securing the ZED (Zero Effect, Zero Defect) scheme’s certification has reached Rs 275.67 crore since the launch of the scheme in April 2022. The financial assistance provided till December last year was Rs 105 crore. Focused on encouraging enterprises to adopt environment-friendly manufacturing practices with improved product quality, the scheme offers subsidies on certification costs.
For medium enterprises, up to 50 per cent subsidy is offered on the certification cost while for small enterprises, the subsidy offered is up to 60 per cent and up to 80 per cent for micro enterprises. MSMEs under the scheme are charged Rs 10,000 for bronze certification, Rs 40,000 for silver certification, and Rs 90,000 for gold certification.
As of Tuesday, 3.47 lakh units were registered under the scheme, of which 2.19 lakh units were bronze certified while 871 were silver certified and 1,382 were gold certified, according to the data available on the scheme’s portal.
In December last year, the MSME Ministry had made the scheme free for women-led MSMEs. It currently provides an additional subsidy of 10 per cent for the MSMEs owned by women and SC-ST entrepreneurs.
ZED scheme analyzes enterprises seeking certification based on various parameters. Overall, it has 20 parameters including leadership, workplace hygiene, workplace safety, quality management, HR management, energy and environment management, risk management, waste management, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and more.
MSMEs have to comply with all 20 parameters for gold certification while silver certification requires compliance on 14 parameters and five for bronze certification.
Improving MSME manufacturing assumes significance for the government in the backdrop of its Make in India initiative. Moreover, MSMEs have a 36 per cent share in India’s manufacturing output as of FY22.
To boost manufacturing by MSMEs, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in this year’s budget had announced a Rs 100 crore credit guarantee scheme for enabling term loans to buy machinery and equipment without collateral.