Union Budget 2020 India | Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Indian MSMEs have asked Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to set up a national mechanism connecting governments at the state and centre for seamless feedback and grievance redressal.
“While recording grievances in the public domain itself creates a pressure to address them fast, the systematic study of feedback periodically- say once a year, would lead to reform agenda for Government,” said MSME body Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME) in its budget recommendations to Sitharaman recently. MSMEs have sought systemic and continuous access to higher authorities and top officials in the government for discussing their problems and seeking a timely solution.
The feedback, according to FISME, if taken rarely becomes part of ‘institutional knowledge’ and that the process to get heard is arduous and arbitrary and depends on the whims of the person in the chair to grant meeting. In the budget suggestions, to resolve this challenge, MSMEs have asked the finance minister that adequate time should be assigned for public meetings and displayed in every office and on its websites. Also, the record of such meetings with MSMEs may be archived for future references, transparency and accountability.
MSMEs, among other suggestions, requested for amendment in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (Insolvency Resolution Process for Corporate Persons) Regulations, 2016 to include the payments due to small businesses from corporate debtors before and during the CIRP within the ambit of ‘insolvency resolution process costs’ as provided for under section 5 (13) of IBC read with regulation 31 of the IBBI regulations. The recovery process, according to FISME, under IBC is “extremely one-sided,” as MSMEs are classified as operational creditors and currently gets nothing in the event of their buyers undergoing CIRP. Small businesses also suggested enacting a Payment Act in the upcoming budget to ensure timely payments by the government and large companies to MSMEs.
Published On : 08-01-2020
Source : Financial Express
