New Delhi, Mar 28 (KNN) The Faizabad Chapter of Indian Industries Association (IIA) that has been working form past 37 years for the development of the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) has released their charter of expectations or suggestions for the political parties to include in their party’s manifesto for the growth of MSME sector in the coming years.

Sharing the charter of suggestions with KNN India, Faizabad Chapter Chief from IIA, Om Prakash Jaiswal said “This is the campaign that IIA is running all over India and submitting the letter of suggestions to the candidates who are contesting elections from different parties and different districts of different states.”

In their letter of suggestion, IIA asked for conversion of leasehold industrial lands into freehold not only to solve the problem of availability of land but also to save the entrepreneurs from the the torture of Industrial development corporation.

For the inclusion of comprehensive reforms in the power sector, the association said “Process of cross-subsidy under which one type of consumers are given electricity at cheap rates and another type of consumers are given electricity on high rates should be stopped.”

If the government wants to give electricity at cheap rates to some consumers then it should pay the extra bill from its own treasure, it added.

Chairman of electricity regulatory commission should be retired judicial officers/judges and not the retired officials who have very little information about legal acts, another point raised by the association in the letter of demand.

Fixed charges, minimum charges, and electricity duty are added in Industrial power rates which high electricity bill because of which financial burden increases on MSE. Therefore IIA suggests that all the above-mentioned charges should be waived off and industrialist should be charged on the basis of per unit consumed.

Besides this, it suggested that some discount should be given on development duty levied on industrial lands and the rate of interest on loans up to Rs 2 crore taken by MSME sectors from banks should be equivalent to the housing sector.

In case of non-payment of the remaining amount on time, there should be a law for the payment of the money by facilitation council formed under MSME Act 2006 through land revenue act, IIA recommended.

The MSME association said that small and micro enterprises faces lots of challenges when it comes getting loans from bank, especially in today’s banking environment where banks give loans on zero risk. In the past, micro and small industries used to get some help from state financial institutes which are lying inactive.
In this regard, IIA suggested that institutes should be made functional again to solve this problem.

The association further suggested the new government to start an entrepreneur pension scheme because after a certain age they become incapable of working due to old age and survival becomes difficult for them.

Also, it asked for simplification of GST laws and amendments in labour laws.

IIA said “Despite several measures taken by all the governments, the MSME sector is still facing various problems like unavailability of land at a reasonable price, high rate of bank loans, increase in cost of production in comparison to large industries and many more.”

Therefore, state and Centre governments need to take some more steps in order to make MSMEs more competitive at national and international level.

According to the annual report 2017-18 of MSME Ministry, there are a total of 633.88 lakh MSMEs out of which 630.52 lakh are micro and 3.31 lakh are small. Large industries are just 4000 in numbers and therefore after agriculture, it is the second largest sector to provide jobs. (KNN/YV)