DMK member of Parliament (MP) Kalanidhi Veeraswamy has reached out to the MSME Minister Nitin Gadkari more than the ‘absence’ of MSME information across sectors and states in the nation. In a letter to the minister on Sunday, Veeraswamy stated, “Unfortunately, we do not have any data available with respect to the number of enterprises that are under trading/manufacturing/exporting/service categories with their sectors involved (such as textile/automobile/IteS/electronics…) state wise (if not district wise).” The MP also recommended measures for gathering and streamlining MSME information devoid of which “we will not be able to plan and implement any support schemes and pave the way forward for their growth in the coming years.”
Importantly, the letter had cited TheSpuzz Online’s story earlier this month that reported 1.02 crore MSMEs registered below UAM in between September 2015 and June 2020 apart from almost 22 lakh units registered below EM II in between 2007 and 2015, as per the FY21 annual report of the MSME Ministry. Moreover, as of May 16, 2021, 30,00,822 MSMEs had been registered on the Udyam Registration portal, which replaced the erstwhile method of filing for Udyog Aadhaar Memorandum (UAM). Hence, out of the 1.24 crore registered MSMEs (UAM and EM II) in India, 24.1 per cent had been registered on the new portal assuming all Udyam Registrations had been current MSMEs from UAM or EM II.
“The data available in MSME website claims to have over 65 million MSME but I understand that there were 1.02 crore registered MSMEs under UAM…This exposes the huge gap between the data on MSME,” the MP added.
Among the information points to be incorporated in the MSME database recommended by Veeraswamy had been the year of establishment of MSME and annual turnover through last 3 years, quantity of blue/white/brown collar personnel, quantity of formal/informal workforce along with their status as migrant or nearby, and quantity of skilled and unskilled personnel. “The best way is door-to-door survey as major industrial towns have area and locality defined and MSMEs in that region at least can be brought in the records. Investment in infrastructure or machines should be the main criteria as the infra you create leads to wealth generation and more activity and involves a level playing field overall,” Alok Kumar Jain, Proprietor, KPJ Distributors told TheSpuzz Online.
Veeraswamy also urged the minister to “generate one Unique Identification Number (UIN) for MSMEs as per these norms, with which we can tract many data such as — the number of enterprises which are in proprietorship, partnership, private limited, closely listed, public listed, employment in formal and informal segments, jobs under different categories of sectors, turnover and growth contribution in different types of the enterprises and sectors.”
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“MP Dr Kalanidhi has raised the valid and justifiable fundamentals on MSME. This data, if collected immediately, will serve as tracking points for future analysis and study. For the last seven years, we have no data which is worth analysis with respect to jobs and enterprise. Economy and livelihood need closer study now for future growth. We can address MSME problems if we have proper data,” K E Raghunathan, Convenor, Consortium of Indian Associations told TheSpuzz Online.
MSMEs had to earlier register at District Industries Centres (DICs) prior to the MSME Development Act, 2006 came into impact. Later, as per the provisions of the act, MSMEs had to file EM- aspect I at DICs prior to beginning an enterprise EM-aspect II soon after commencement of production. The government had last year introduced the Udyam Registration portal that replaced the erstwhile method of filing for UAM. Moreover, the last survey involving MSMEs’ count was the National Sample Survey (NSS) 73rd round performed by the National Sample Survey Office through FY16 that recorded 6.33 crore unincorporated non-agriculture MSMEs in India, of which 6.30 crore had been micro firms, 3.31 lakh had been compact enterprises and 5,000 had been mid-sized firms. The Reserve Bank of India had last year mandated firms registered below Entrepreneur Memorandum (EM) aspect II and UAM till June 30, 2020, to file for new registrations on the Udyam Registration portal.
“Before the Udyam portal, there were guidelines for MSMEs to take different Udyog Aadhaar registration for their multiple factories. However, we had objected to this as many large enterprises with multiple factories having turnover and investment of around Rs 50-100 crore were treated as MSMEs and were indirectly benefitted whereas the intent was to support MSMEs only. While in the new portal, which requires Aadhaar and PAN, GST details, one can also add new units but the turnover and investment limit will be picked from the company’s balance sheet automatically unlike in UAM, which required only Aadhaar, where you had to provide details manually,” Mukesh Mohan Gupta, President, Chamber of Indian Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (CIMSME) told TheSpuzz Online.