Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: In a longstanding demand from retail and trade market associations, Minister of MSME Nitin Gadkari today announced revised definition for MSMEs. Through a tweet, he announced that the MSME Ministry has issued an order to consist of retailers and wholesale traders beneath the MSMEs to extend the rewards of priority sector lending to them.
Gadkari wrote in a tweet, “Under the leadership of PM Shri Narendra Modi Ji, we are committed to strengthening of MSME and make them engines for economic growth. The revised guidelines will benefit 2.5 Cr Retail and Wholesale Traders.”
Wholesale and retail trading activities had been earlier classified as MSMEs but a gazette notification dated June 2017 ousted them from the Micro and Small enterprises sector. Its rationale was that they are neither manufacturing units nor service units and therefore, can’t get the Udyog Aadhaar Memorandum (which is referred to as MSME registration).
With the revised recommendations the retail and wholesale trades will now be capable to register on the Udyam Registration Portal.
The announcement has seen a positive response from the market associations. Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India (RAI), stated that this is a landmark choice that will give retail MSMEs the help they need to have to survive, revive and thrive.
B.C.Bhartia, National President and Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) stated this move will advantage more than eight crore smaller firms of the nation. CAIT has been raising this challenge for more than a year. They stated in a press statement, “traders now will be able to avail requisite finances from the banks and financial institutions under Priority Sector Lending.” They could now also leverage numerous other Government schemes for the MSMEs.