Cut compliance burden for SMEs with less than Rs 5 crore turnover, says India SME Forum

New Delhi: With the government expected to soon kick off consultations with industry for Union Budget 2022, trade body India SME Forum has said that compliance process for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) should come down substantially.”We would like compliances to get tapered off. Globally, countries are looking at reduced compliance. We should look at equating it with global principles where compliance is drastically reduced for companies upto Rs 5 crore (of turnover),” Vinod Kumar, president, India SME Forum told UNI.

More than 63 million MSMEs across the country contribute nearly 40 per cent of India’s overall exports.

As per Central Statistics Office, share of MSME Gross Value Added (GVA) in GDP at current prices (2011-12) for the year 2018-19 and 2019-20 were 30.5 per cent and 30.0 per cent respectively.

Kumar also said that there is need to bring micro and small players on the online platform and digitise them as competition is now not from the neghbourhood or next-door firm but from all over the world.

“Today, any Indian can buy anything from any international e-commerce website and it will get delivered as long as it is within the ambit of the Customs Act or one product at a time. So, we need to enable our SMEs to be able to cater to customers from around the world,” the India SME Forum president said.

He noted the importance of e-commerce in spurring the growth of MSMEs and said that government should give incentives to micro and small players for going digital.

“We need to focus more on labour-intensive sectors more to digitise. We need to work on how our SMEs can be more globally competitive,” Kumar stated.

UNI