Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched new features of the government’s employment generation scheme Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) to enhance MSMEs’ capacity for job creation. The maximum cost admissible for financial assistance to entrepreneurs has been increased from existing Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh for setting up new manufacturing units and from existing Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh for setting up new service units. Moreover, PMEGP applicants from Aspirational districts and transgenders would now be treated as the Special Category applicants to be entitled to higher subsidies.
Addressing the Udyami Bharat programme, PM Modi also noted that handholding support will be offered to entrepreneurs through the engagement of banking, technical and marketing experts. “The support has now been doubled. PMEGP was launched during the recession period in 2008. The earlier government had claimed of creating lakhs of jobs in the following four years. However, it couldn’t even reach the halfway mark. In 2014, we revised the target, brought in new processes, and despite the Covid period, over 40 lakh jobs have been created since 2014 through MSMEs under PMEGP. During this period, Rs 14,000 crore worth of margin money subsidy was provided to MSMEs,” PM Modi said.
Importantly, the new features launched by PM Modi were announced by the government in May 2022.
Meanwhile, PMEGP jobs created had hit a record high of 8,25,752 in FY22, the MSME Ministry had said in April this year. Also, the number of enterprises set up during the year jumped over 1 lakh to 1,03,219 for the first time in the past 14 years. The growth in units set-up and employment created under PMEGP in FY22 was up by 39 per cent each from FY21, while the margin money distribution (subsidy) had jumped 36 per cent.
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PM Modi also highlighted Rs 19-lakh-crore credit given to Mudra scheme beneficiaries so far including 7 crore first-time entrepreneurs. Moreover, out of around 36 crore loans given under the Mudra scheme, around 70 per cent have been to women entrepreneurs. On the Udyam registration portal as well, around 18 per cent of the registered MSMEs are led by women, he added.
The Prime Minister also urged more MSMEs to register on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal. “Government is a large buyer and most of the things needed are produced by MSMEs…Why can’t we have 3-4 crore sellers instead of the current 40-50 lakh so that the government also has more choice in terms of sellers to buy products. MSMEs should maximise the benefits of selling on GeM,” PM Modi said.
Among other initiatives, Rs 6,062.45-crore World Bank assisted central government programme for MSMEs — RAMP and the ‘Capacity Building of First-Time MSME Exporters’ (CBFTE) scheme to boost the quality of MSME products to match international standards were also launched by PM Modi.