New Delhi, Aug 24 (KNN) The Ministry of MSME will launch a dedicated portal for online submission of grievances with the Government departments by the MSMEs.

This was announced by Dr Arun Kumar Panda, Secretary, Ministry of MSME, at a meeting with the MSME representatives recently.

Dr. Panda also mentioned that the concerned ministry / department will have to take a time bound action and post it on the portal for public viewing.

He also mentioned that till a grievance is redressed, it will show pending against the concerned ministry / departments for public viewing.

The approach is unique in the sense that so far the grievances redressal portals only showed the grievances redressed and not the pending cases, the number of which is often huge.

The Secretary commented that they are expecting complaints in lakhs and accordingly making a robust IT infrastructure.

Commenting on the development, V K Agarwal, a reputed entrepreneur of Lucknow mentioned that if developed properly, the portal will address a long pending demand of the MSMEs of India.

Agarwal, a past President of FISME, the leading federation of MSMEs also stressed that entrepreneurs are highly frustrated with the stonewall they face in Government.

He mentioned that to induce the MSMEs to open up with their grievances, Government need to show prompt results on the complaints.

In the opinion of the MSMEs use of analytic tools can generate important information for the Government, from the portal, on how proactive the Ministries are to the issues raised by MSMEs, the largest employers  in  the country.

Experts on the sector also opine that as most of the MSMEs could not be able to articulate their grievances, logically, associations should pitch in.

Government should allow the associations to file complain on behalf of the MSMEs in an articulated manner.

However, while the Ministry of MSME is gearing up to launch the grievances portal at the earliest, the MSME associations are preparing how best the mechanism  could be utilised to address the roadblocks MSMEs are facing daily with the government system. (KNN/ DB)