Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The MSME Ministry is working on bringing various schemes from different ministries and public departments on a common platform Udyam Shakti for MSMEs to benefit from them. Addressing the second edition of the SMEArtha event organised by FEAspire on Tuesday, Ishita Ganguli Tripathy, Additional Development Commissioner, Office of DC-MSME, Ministry of MSME said the work on the initiative is currently in progress.
“This is something where we are working with other ministries, departments and also state governments for converging their programmes. With MSMEs registering on the Udyam portal, we are looking to give them the benefits of (schemes) by other ministries, departments, and state governments also instead of only schemes by the MSME ministry,” Tripathy said.
The details on how the initiative will enable MSMEs to benefit from the relevant schemes of other ministries and by when it is expected to be launched weren’t disclosed.
Meanwhile, Tripathy also underscored the ministry’s primary goal of getting more MSMEs into the formal economic fold as around 70-80 per cent of India’s 6.3 crore MSMEs operate informally.
“We are now going to use banks and other financial institutions’ database of enterprises who have not yet registered on the Udyam portal and use the data to bring those unorganised businesses to formal sector in order to help them in accessing credit. We are working with SIDBI on this and hope to see the results soon,” she added.
The need to formalise the MSME sector was also highlighted by MSME Ministry Secretary B.B. Swain at the MSME Business Conclave organised by FEAspire in June this year. “The multiplicity of issues which we face in the MSME sector, it is probably a multi-pronged approach which is more suitable. The first obvious step here, which is also kind of the biggest ambition of the MSME Ministry is to identify MSMEs and to bring them under a formal structure. Formalisation is our primary target and the biggest ambition,” Swain had said.
Tripathy said the ministry in the past few months have also had multiple stakeholder consultations on issues related to delayed payments, public procurement, TReDS, etc., and taken recommendations from MSMEs, MSME associations, and state governments as well.
“We have been regularly taking up the matter of delayed payments with various state governments because industry is a state subject and facilitation councils, working to address the issue of late payments, are governed by state governments,” she added.