Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Formalisation of MSMEs and access to affordable credit are the major ambitions of the MSME Ministry, which is also directly related to the presence of several enterprises in the cultural space, said B. B. Swain, Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
Swain was addressing a FICCI event as India assumed charge of the G20 presidency. He said that the MSME sector has shown tremendous resilience during the pandemic which was due to the policy changes introduced by the government.
“Policy changes occurred in various sectors, from broadening the scope of MSME sector to enhancing the ease of doing business, from making the existing guidelines and also new schemes to make them (the MSMEs) more inclusive, for providing various options of financing and for providing equity support for strengthening market access,” he said.
The secretary added that the ministry took an important decision to extend non-tax benefits to three years instead of one year for all MSMEs whose categorization (from micro to small or from small to medium) had changed upwards.
The key focus areas of the ministry, Swain added, were solving the issue of delayed payments, providing affordable credit, rolling out Raising and Accelerating MSME Performance (RAMP) scheme, organizing hackathons, providing for technological upgradation, and convergence of schemes and programmes of other ministries and departments of state governments.
The secretary further said that the MSME ministry is working along with ecosystem stakeholders for a competitive and vibrant MSME sector which will give a complete new identity to Indian businesses and their products and services at the global level.
