<div>In the 67-odd years since Independence, while micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) have contributed to form a major chunk of industry, the MSME sector still does not have a policy for itself. That is going to change over the next few days as the central government comes out with a policy targeted at small and medium enterprises. This was stated by Amarendra Sinha, development commissioner & additional secretary, ministry of MSME at the launch of the BW |Businessworld SME Whitebook.<br /><br />The idea behind the policy is to simplify procedures and procurement norms for small and medium enterprises. As a first step, the government will put the policy document on the ministry website and seek recommendations from people. Once it gets feedback from people, those could be incorporated into the final policy document. The idea is get a better idea of what people and industry want.<br /><br />What the policy aims to do is to make it much simpler to register SMEs. One can expect the policy to redefine the sector in terms of turnover, capital employed and labour employed. That is expected to make a huge difference to the over 46 million small and medium enterprises that account for over 40 per cent of Indian exports and employ over 106 million people.<br /><br />In a way, the MSME policy could well be a pivot for furthering Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ plan of making the country a manufacturing hub. While it is not clear what all changes are expected, there is talk of amending exemptions of excise duty on goods made by MSMEs. The big problem that the sector faces today is that it is largely unorganised. As a result, access to finance emerges as one of the biggest problems.<br /><br />In his Budget speech, finance minister Arun Jaitley had mentioned that the definition of MSME will be reviewed to provide for a higher capital ceiling. A programme to facilitate forward and backward linkages with multiple value chain of manufacturing and service delivery will also be put in place.<br /><br /><br />anup@businessworld.in<br />anupjayaram@gmail.com<br />@anupjayaram</div>
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