The Joint Council of MSME Associations of Coimbatore has submitted a representation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman, and Minister for MSMEs Nitin Gadkari.
The Joint Council of MSME Associations of Coimbatore has submitted a representation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman, and Minister for MSMEs Nitin Gadkari.
While expressing wholehearted gratitude for successful measures being taken by both central and state governments for their sincere efforts to eradicate the spread COVID-19, they have put forth a number of requests to the central government.
Pointing out that there was no business for about 50 days due to lockdown and industries have only slowly started their operations with minimum manpower as recently as last week, the council foresees nil saleable revenue for the next one month, about 30% till the end of the second quarter, about 70% till the end of 3rd quarter when businesses should hopefully be doing close to break-even and see some relief during the last quarter.
They said in an already slowing economy wherein many companies have invested heavily and leveraged, the lockdown due to the effect of COVID-19 has hit the MSMEs very badly.In such a scenario, they have highlighted the importance of creating demand which, according to them, needs to be addressed to give a fillip to the economy.
The council said it must be noted that providing loans to MSMEs may not reach the desired objective unless demand is created and in the present scenario, it will take six more months to get orders. The council has suggested that only way to increase the demand is by enabling people to have higher liquidity and by downward revision of the existing GST structure for various goods.
They have requested that, therefore, a suitable policy towards this has to be taken by the Government of India at the earliest. The council believes that a move in this direction will act as a catalyst in the revival of MSMEs.
One of the main requests the council representation has made is regarding payment of salary during the lockdown period. They feel MSMEs do not have the capacity and viability to pay the entire month’s salary without running their business during the lockdown period and hence government has to provide a grant directly or through ESIC to the employees for the lockdown period and this may be credited directly to the employees account.
Further, the representation by the Council has requested a number of facilities to be provided to the MSMEs such as allowing emergency credit line up to 20% of the sanctioned limit, interest subvention for the emergency credit line loan, waiving of interest accumulated during the lockdown period, relaxation and extension of NPA norms, postponement of GST departmental audit, converting all the micro industries loans to Mudra scheme, etc.