Centre revises MSMEs guidelines, to include retail and wholesale trade under sector; key points

Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) and Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari Friday announced the inclusion of retail and wholesale trade under MSMEs. The minister said that the revised guidelines will benefit 2.5 crore retail and wholesale traders.

"Now under the revised guidelines, retail and wholesale trade will also benefit from priority sector lending under RBI guidelines," the MSME minister added.

In a tweet, he said that the government is committed to strengthening MSMEs and make them engines of economic growth.

Why is it relevant? With the revised guidelines the retail and wholesale trades will be now be allowed to register on Udyam Registration Portal.

• Gadkari said that retail and wholesale trade were left out of the ambit of MSME.
• Now under the revised guidelines, retail and wholesale trade will also get benefit of priority sector lending under the Reserve Bank of India guidelines.

The fine print: Gadkari said tha the NDA government is committed to strengthening the MSME sector and make them engines for economic growth. His announcement aslo comes amid several relief measures announced by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who had increased the limit under the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) by 50 percent to Rs 4.5 lakh crore to help small businesses get credit at concessional rate.

How has the industry responded? The announcement has seen a positive response from the industry associations.

• Commenting on the development, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said, with this decision, traders will be able to avail requisite finances from banks and financial institutions under priority sector lending. Besides, now the traders can avail the benefits of several other government schemes for MSMEs, it said in a statement.
• Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India (RAI) said, "this is a landmark decision that will give retail MSMEs the support they need to survive, revive and thrive."
• BC Bhartia, naptional President and Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said the move will benefit more than eight crore small businesses of the country. They said 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 several other Government schemes for the MSMEs."

With inputs from PTI