Covid effect on MSMEs: Over 82 per cent of more than 250 tiny corporations in India mentioned that they had a adverse Covid effect even though 70 per cent believed their pre-Covid level recovery to take practically a year, according to a survey by Dun & Bradstreet. Moreover, about 60 per cent survey respondents anticipated more measures and assistance from the government even as lack of industry access (42 per cent), all round productivity improvement (37 per cent), and access to more finance (37 per cent) had been the leading 3 challenges cited by MSMEs in the survey titled Impact of COVID-19 on Small Businesses in India and the Way Ahead. The surveyed corporations in seven big cities belonged to the manufacturing and services sectors with annual income in between Rs one hundred crore and Rs 300 crore.
Moreover, about 95 per cent respondents mentioned that they had been impacted in April 2020 when the national lockdown was imposed. Even with progressive unlocking, 70 per cent corporations remained disrupted till August 2020 and 40 per cent till the finish of February 2021. “The pandemic has speed up the pace of digitization across sectors and businesses have reaped advantages like cost reduction and increased productivity. Globally, digital adoption has accelerated by seven years due to the Covid-19 crisis. Our survey points out that 82% of surveyed Small Businesses have digitized their daily operations during this pandemic, which helped them in Reduction in Cost (54%) and Enhancing Competitiveness (51%),” Avinash Gupta, Managing Director, Dun & Bradstreet India in a statement.
Also study: RBI loan moratorium of tiny aid for MSMEs as organization recovery to repay remained low, say experts
India has a base of about 6.33 crore MSMEs out of which 6.30 crore (more than 99 per cent) are micro-enterprises, according to the MSME Ministry’s annual report 2020-21. Small enterprises are 3.31 lakh and .05 lakh are medium enterprises accounting for .52 per cent and .01 per cent of total estimated MSMEs, respectively. Ever considering the fact that Covid struck India, there have been several surveys searching to ascertain the effect of the pandemic on MSMEs. According to an RBI survey last year, the MSME segment struggling to survive and scale amid Covid has been amongst the 5 sectors adversely impacted by the pandemic. 60 per cent respondents had claimed recovery in the MSME sector, which suffered from huge labour migration, production halt, and money flow crunch throughout the lockdown. Moreover, according to a Crisil survey published in December last year, the adoption of digital channels such as on-line aggregators or marketplaces, social media, and mobile marketing and advertising has elevated from 29 per cent micro-enterprises employing them ahead of Covid to 47 per cent as of November. The jump was marginally greater amongst tiny enterprises from 29 per cent ahead of Covid to 53 per cent throughout the mentioned period for income generation.