Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) Ministry has further extended the validity of Udyog Aadhaar Memorandum (UAM) registration till June 30, 2022, from March 31, 2022. MSMEs holding UAM license will now have time till June end to switch to the Udyam registration and continue benefitting from various government schemes and incentives including priority sector lending. Udyam portal was introduced by the government in July 2020 to replace the UAM registration system and ease the online process for businesses to register as MSMEs. The latest UAM extension was announced in a notification by the MSME Ministry.
The UAM registrations initially had validity till March 31, 2021, for MSMEs to get onto the new Udyam portal. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had also said in 2020 that existing Entrepreneur Memorandum II and/or UAM registrations obtained before June 30, 2020, will remain valid till March 31, 2021. However, the government had extended it again for a relatively longer period till December 2021.
Nonetheless, the extension given to UAM will not be around for too long, a government official had told TheSpuzz Online earlier on anonymity. “Maybe to streamline the system of registration, there was a need for this to benefit MSMEs who want to come onto the Udyam portal. But UAM and Udyam Registration cannot exist in parallel…Udyam Registration is advisory for micro and small enterprises as per the MSME Development Act, 2006 if they want to avail the benefit of government schemes offered to MSMEs. But for medium enterprises, it is mandatory,” the official had said.
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According to the MSME Ministry’s 2020-21 annual report, 21,96,902 EM-II filings were recorded during the 2007-2015 period while from September 2015 till June 30 2020, there were 1,02,32,451 (1.02 crore) UAM registrations. As of May 11, 85.15 lakh MSMEs had registered on the Udyam portal. However, data on the share of existing MSMEs migrating from UAM and new Udyam registrations wasn’t available on the Udyam portal.