Meet to redress woes of MSME entrepreneurs held

Tirupati: To get feedback on various policies of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector and to bridge the gap between the bankers and entrepreneurs, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) along with Chamber of Commerce has organised a ‘town hall programme’ here on Friday.

Speaking on the occasion, RBI Regional Director R Subrahmanyam made it clear the purpose of entire exercise was to benefit entrepreneurs in MSME sector. In this direction, a marathon meeting was held with bankers during the day.

“The objective is to ensure that whatever we have been discussing on the final aspects of policy has to reach the ground level of the MSME sector as if they were not getting bankers support, the entire exercise will go waste,” he observed.

He said the entrepreneurs are the final beneficiaries of all policies. “The RBI or Government of India make policies in Mumbai or Delhi. But they feel that they miss feedback from the entrepreneurs at grass-root level which is essential to make policies more effective and useful to all and for this purpose these types of events are essential,” he said.

APIIC Chairman Dr P Krishnaiah said both Central and State governments have brought in so many policies like ‘Make in India’, ‘Stand up India’, ‘MUDRA loans’ to provide new avenues to entrepreneurs, who wish to start small and medium industrial units.

But, still there were some problems in implementation due to lack of understanding at both sides. “State government has introduced at least 10 policies for this sector. At district-level, District Industrial Committee led by Collectors was providing all approvals for the entrepreneurs whereas at the State-level these were provided under single desk policy.

If all papers regarding the new venture is submitted online, they will get approvals in 21 days. If they don’t get approval in that time frame it can be treated as the unit is approved,” he clarified. Ease of doing business was brought in with many reforms but still there may be some gaps in the entire process like land issues, power and water availability and bank loans.

Till now, only 20 per cent of targets were fulfilled under Start up India. Finding the exact problems with case studies will help solve them and improve the policies, he said. “As there is no dearth of land in the state, the idea is to establish small industrial parks in every constituency and provide opportunities to more entrepreneurs.

Now the process of converting agricultural land into non-agricultural one and establish an industry became so easy which can simply be done by paying three per cent of fee on the registration value of land and send a letter to RDO concerned accordingly,” Krishnaiah maintained. FSME president A P K Reddy, RBI CGM Manas Mohanti, Tirupati Chamber of Commerce president A Manjunath and DICCI Chairman David also spoke.