The coronavirus pandemic practically stopped the country for the last few months. The most badly hit were micro and small-scale industries(MSME) as stopping production caused most of them to run in debt and the lakhs of people to lose their jobs. A large proportion of these people were laborers who couldn’t even muster enough food to feed their children one square meal a day.
About 50% of our exports come from Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, due to the Coronavirus pandemic these industries suffered huge losses and are currently in need of funds to cover the operational costs and cost of raw materials to start their business again. Thankfully, a major portion of the recent Rs. 20 lakh crore relief packages were to help these MSME s start their businesses again as well as provide incentives for new producers to come. These measures bring India a step closer to Narendra Modi’s “Atmanirbhar Bharat” with the government expecting India to cross the $5 trillion by 2024 with MSMEs alone contributing $2 trillion. Some major policy reforms which will transform the entire MSME sector are-
A change in the definition of MSME- The new definition does not only take investment but also it’s turnover into account. According to the revised definitions, any firm with an investment up to Rs. 1 crore and turnover up to Rs. 5 crores are classified as “Micro”, those with investment up to Rs. 10 crore and turnover up to Rs. 50 crores are classified as “Small” and finally those enterprises with investment up to Rs. 20 crore and turnover under Rs. 100 crores are classified as a “Medium” enterprise.
Rs. 3 lakh crores Collateral free Automatic loans for businesses
Rs. 2500 crores EPF support for businesses and workers for 3 months
Extension of registration date and completion of real estate projects under RERA
These are some of the few measures taken to develop the MSME sector. In the future, it is very much possible that everything we ever need will be available in our locality whose prices will be cheap and quality will be quite high. If everything goes well, India will become the biggest manufacturing force in the world.