Redefining the role of MSMEs towards a self-reliant India

MSME is the engine of economic growth in India. It is a unique feature of Indian economy, which contributes more than 30% income to our GDP absorbing almost 114 million people in MSME sector. Out of 0.16 million MSME units, 99% are micro, 0.5 % small and 0.01 % are medium enterprises. All units are almost proportionately distributed among manufacturing, trading and service sectors. A road map needs to be created with holistic approach to protect the MSMEs from their closers, because it has taken years together in India to create such a robust sector feeding almost one forth of our population in the country. Both the central and state Government need to work together to revive the sector giving the number of incentives to protect the small entrepreneurs and also to the new start ups. In order to facilitate the MSMEs the Banks should adopt the new mechanism to appraise the loan proposals of MSMEs availing information from various sources like GSTN, income tax, credit bureaus, etc to ensure the due diligence while sanctioning the loan in a short duration. Since, MSME sector contributes significantly to exports, our MSMEs are required to be integrated with global value chains (GVC) to remain competitive upgrading them technologically and also digitally. It will facilitate MSMEs to produce standard goods and services to have better acceptability in the global market.

-DR. S . K. JENA