PCQUEST,

Brijesh Agrawal, Co-founder & Director, IndiaMART.com speaks on what to expect from budget for MSME sector

1. What are your pre-budget expectations for the MSME segment?
We expect more effort on implementation of existing policies. While a number of initiatives like building stronger infrastructure, introducing MSME friendly schemes and implementation of GST have been introduced, application of these still remain a huge challenge.

2. Which of your expectations were actually met from the last year’s budgets?
A number of policies that we expected have been introduced for MSMEs in the past, yet as shared earlier implementation of the same remains a challenge. Mobilization of capital remains one of the biggest growth challenges for any MSME both from a starting up and sustaining aspect. While there have been schemes like CGTMSE (Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Small and Medium Enterprise), there reach is extremely limited. CGTMSE was introduced in 2000; but practically it still has not been rolled-out in the most effective manner. Collateral free financial support can be a great support for Micros and Small business; but the scheme to a large limit has been able to benefit on the large size SMEs. We are hoping that the current budget should ensure that all leading banks that fall under the scheme should increase efficacy of the scheme and abide strongly by it.

3. Are you expecting any measures from the govt. to combat the threat that China poses to India’s manufacturing sector?
I firmly believe that we need to build scale in order to counter any threat from any country. This scale will come from better infrastructure, simplification of taxation & rules and flexible guidelines around industrial labour, skilled manpower development etc. Hence to re-iterate, there is a need for better implementation of existing rules and policies to ensure that MSMEs are able to perform in a more efficient and effective manner.