Chennai, Mar 3 (KNN) Eyeing at raising the concerns surrounding the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) of regions including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the industry bodies of these regions have urged centre to look into their issues.

A meeting was held recently to populate the concerns of the MSMEs in this regard.

This meeting was attended by officials of MSME bodies of the south including TANSTIA, KASSIA, KSSIA, FSME-INDIA, FETSIA and FAPSIA.

Highlighting the problems faced by the sector, the MSMEs raised high interest rates on loans given to MSMEs by banks continue to deter growth of the units. At present the rate of interest for MSMEs stand close to 12-13 per cent which is quite high, the MSME urged the centre to reduce it to a uniform 8 per cent bracket.

The MSMEs further raised that the PSUs and corporates that procure from the MSME units do not release their payments in time, this leads to bad loans.

The gathering acknowledged the government’s initiative of extending the timeline for declaration as NPAs.

With regard to the new turnover based definition of MSMEs, the industry bodies said that there is a need to tweak the definition. For a unit to be micro, 5 crs turnover, Small 5 crs – 25 crs turnover and Medium 25 crs – 250 crs turnover, it said.

Also the forum demanded subsidy to be increased to SME sector.

The participating MSME bodies also urged the government to look into easing the GST filing mechanism for the MSMEs. (With Inputs from a news report) (KNN/DA)