Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Pandemic-induced travel and trade restrictions across numerous states in the nation owing to the increasing quantity of Covid situations has led to 30 per cent organization loss in retail markets, according to the apex body for India’s trader neighborhood Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT). Preventive measures viz., evening curfew, partial lockdown, and so forth., undertaken by the state governments have “caused a panic in the minds of consumers. This has resulted in a loss of 30 per cent in business activities in retail markets in last one week,” the confederation, which represents about 8 crore traders across more than 40,000 trade associations, mentioned in a statement. Moreover, the inter-state movement of goods by traders has also contracted by about 15-20 per cent due to the evening curfew whilst customer footfall in retail markets has also witnessed a almost 50 per cent drop.
The information was based on the week’s functionality shared by CAIT’s trade leaders in states such as Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, according to the joint statement by the confederation’s National President B C Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal. “A closer analysis of the Covid statistics over the last one week has made it amply clear that night curfew, lockdown, and other restrictions have been absolutely futile in achieving the desired results of bringing down the cases.”
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Night curfew has currently been imposed in Delhi, Punjab, Gujarat, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh whilst Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, other individuals have announced restricted lockdown. CAIT had recommended Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday to limit the shop timings from 11.00 am to 5.00 pm as an alternative of imposing a full lockdown. The country’s everyday new Covid situations continue to shoot up. Over 1.45 lakh new situations had been registered in the final 24 hours even as India’s vaccination coverage crossed the 10 crore mark on Saturday.
Importantly, whilst the influence of Covid on MSMEs has been serious, there has been no official record maintained for the quantity of MSMEs impacted. “As MSMEs are there in both formal and informal sector, data regarding temporary or permanent closure of the units are not maintained by the Government of India in Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME),” MSME Minister Nitin Gadkari had mentioned in a written reply to a query in the Rajya Sabha in February.