Benefitting from the Government Schemes for MSMEs
In February 2021, Union MSME Minister Nitin Gadkari said that there are nearly 6.5 crore MSMEs in India, which contribute about 30% to the GDP. Now, with such a big share, it would not be wrong to refer to them as the ‘backbone of the country.’ But an online poll conducted a month before that, by a community social media platform LocalCircles, said that 68% of respondents in the survey had not benefited from the government's MSME and startup-centric schemes in the past 12 months, a period devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. If only 22% of MSMEs and startups had managed to benefit from the schemes, imagine the potential that they hold in contributing to the GDP of the nation. On 13 May 2020, the government also launched various incentives under the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative which were a part of a comprehensive package of Rs 20 lakh crore- almost 10% of the GDP, against the backdrop of the pandemic. In this article, we shall be looking at the various schemes launched by th