Central govt's financial aid schemes for MSME underperformed in some districts of Gujarat due to red tapism: FOKIA

Central govt’s financial aid schemes for MSME underperformed in some districts of Gujarat due to red tapism: FOKIA

Gandhinagar, Mar 22 (KNN) Despite all the push from center and state government, the central government’s financial aid schemes for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) like loan in 59 minutes and startup India didn’t perform well in some districts of Gujarat as expected, according to the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) report.

The under performance of the government’s schemes in various districts of Gujarat such as Vadodara, Gir Somnath and Kutch is due to red-tapism and non-cooperation of the government which poses biggest challenges for the MSMEs to avail the benefits of such schemes, said Nimish Phadke, Managing Director of Federation of Kutch Industries Association (FOKIA), while speaking with KNN India.

He stated “There is no MSME support system in the state despite all the push from the government and this is happening since last many years.”

As far as Kutch is concerned there is no startup ecosystem in place and it could be major reason for the failure of existing schemes run by government, said the Managing Director of FOKIA, an umbrella organization of large, medium & small industries and association.

More or less, despite good efforts or steps by the central government, banks are not actually keen to give loans to MSMEs due to which MSMEs suffer a lot.

According to SLBC report, the performance of MSME support and outreach campaign as of February 28, 2019 as far as ease of credit and employee social security is concerned underperformed in districts like Kutch, Vadodara, Somnath while the performance is quite remarkable in other districts like Ahmedabad, Surendranagar, Bharuch and Surat.

As per the data available on the SLBC-Gujarat website, Surendranagar, which is a hub of cotton and ginning activities in India, with a large number of ginning and pressing units achieved 207 per cent of its target.

With many large chemical plants producing fertilizers, paints, dyes, cotton, textiles, and dairy products, Bharuch managed to achieve the target of126.07%, while Valsad which is also known for its industrial base for Chemicals, Textiles and Paper & Paper Pulp industry sectors achieved the 164.27%.

Besides this, Surat, the hub for textiles and diamond cutting & processing industries and Ahmedabad which is known as the "Manchester of the East" for its textile industry achieved 135.98 and 100.17 per cent respectively.
The data further reflects that of total 9 districts, 3 districts of Gujarat namely the Kutch, Vadodara and Somnath fared poorly under the campaign, with 46.99%, 49.43 % and 34.27% respectively.

While Rajkot achieved at least 70 per cent target under the campaign, the data reveals.

Earlier, MSME support and outreach campaign was slated for 100 days. However, owing to the under-achievement of targets by few districts, the campaign was extended till February 28, 2019, stated the report after the 160th meeting of SLBC-Gujarat.

With regard to the concerns related to MSME, the FOKIA President opined that the pyramid of industrialization can be considered to be complete if an ecosystem of development of clusters of large, medium and small industries can be created and they function on supplementary and complementary basis for mutual growth.

On asking expectations from new government as elections are on the horizon, he suggested that existing policies and schemes should be implemented in letter and spirit in spite of reinventing the bill.

(KNN/YV)