Pan-India survey to make MSMEs more competitive

New Delhi: The micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) ministry is likely to roll out a pan-India survey to assess issues plaguing micro and small enterprises and design policies that will make them more competitive and cost-effective, said MSME ministry additional secretary Rajneesh.

"We are planning to conduct pan-India exercise on cost and competitiveness for MSMEs, reaching at the cluster level, get feedback from MSMEs about the issues and sectoral problems that they face," he said at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Ficci)-CMSME annual summit on Tuesday. He also pointed out that micro and small enterprises in different areas of the country across sectors have distinct problems, and "solutions for them cannot be straitjacketed. The survey will help understand area and sector-specific challenges of MSMEs".

Highlighting interventions by the government that allow state-specific issues to be identified, Rajneesh said under the Raising and Accelerating MSME Performance (RAMP) initiative, state governments are empowered to identify issues hindering MSMEs' growth and design interventions required to resolve these issues.

He said MSMEs employ around 300 million people, and when MSMEs grow, they create jobs, make the Indian economy more resilient, and growth happens across cities in different parts of the country. "When we speak of MSMEs, we speak of inclusive growth, job-led growth and growth which is geographically dispersed. The potential of MSMEs is because they are present in tier-2, -3 cities," he said.

However, stressing that access to finance remains a challenge for the sector, Rajneesh said whether it's adoption of new technology, scaling up or shift towards sustainable practices, access to finance unlocks the real potential of MSMEs.

He also said entrepreneurship, along with credit availability, will put MSMEs on a high-growth path.