Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The MSME ministry won’t be extending the validity of the Udyog Aadhaar Memorandum (UAM) license for MSMEs in order to encourage them to register on the new Udyam registration portal, a source in the know told FE Aspire (erstwhile Financial Express Online). UAM was the registration portal in place for businesses to register as MSMEs before the government launched the Udyam portal in July 2020. The UAM license was valid till June 30, 2022.
“As of today, there is no plan to further extend the validity of UAM further from June 30. This means MSMEs won’t be able to benefit from various government schemes available to them unless they register on the Udyam portal. The intent is to encourage them to get onto the new portal in order for the government to streamline MSME data,” the source said.
Comments from the MSME ministry over email or calls weren’t immediately available for this story.
The government had originally announced UAM validity till March 31, 2021, for MSMEs holding not only UAM license but also the previous Entrepreneur Memorandum (EM) II to move to Udyam and further till December 31, 2021, before giving it the final extension till June this year. According to the MSME Ministry’s 2020-21 annual report, 21,96,902 EM-II filings were recorded during the 2007-2015 period before UAM registration stepped in from September 2015 onwards till June 30 2020.
During the UAM period (nearly five years), 1,02,32,451 (1.02 crore) registrations were recorded in comparison to 1.07 crore MSMEs registered on Udyam in just two years and two months’ time (as of September 8), according to the Udyam portal data. However, data on the share of existing MSMEs migrating from UAM and new Udyam registrations couldn’t be ascertained.
“UAM is now not a valid document now and if MSMEs want to take benefits of government schemes, they won’t be able to do so. In other words, If UAM holders haven’t registered on the Udyam portal, they are no more registered MSMEs,” said Mukesh Mohan Gupta, President of MSME association Chamber of Indian Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (CIMSME) told FE Aspire.