Tuesday, September 02, 2014: Utkal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UCCI), the apex industry chamber of the Odisha, has expressed concern over the challenges faced by the state’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector. This entity has urged the government to set up a task force to redress the issues of the MSME units.
The chamber has written a letter to Chief Minister Naveen Painaik that a task force needs to be set up under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary to draw a proper plan for redressal of difficulties faced by both the start-up units and the existing ones. The state government has been planning to bring out a new Industrial Policy Resolution and MSME policy. Now UCCI has complained about the non-implementation of the various clauses of the prevailing policies namely PR-2007 and MSME Development Policy-2009. Thus growth of the sector has been affected a lot.
The letter to Patnaik said, “Most of the clauses of the policy have not been implemented in the absence of notification by concerned departments. Therefore, before publishing a new policy, the task force should go through reasons for non-implementation of the earlier policy and talk to different departments, PSUs and agencies. After ascertaining the reasons, the task force should suggest remedial measures which should be incorporated in a new policy so that its implementation becomes full proof and different incentives declared in the policy reaches the door-step of the entrepreneur.”
The industry body has pointed out that the engineers and youths who are planning to start their new ventures in this sector are facing problems in getting the land. Though several requests have been made by the industry bodies the state-owned Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) has not established any new industrial estate in last 15 years. According to UCCI, “The task force will find out the reasons for this and either prevail upon Idco to build new industrial estates or can suggest for a separate MSME infrastructure wing in Idco to ensure development of exclusive industrial estates for the MSME sector.” The chamber also asked for a separate infrastructure development corporation for the MSME sector.
Government intervention has been sought by UCCI for the rationalisation of Value Added Tax (VAT) for MSMEs. The letter added, “Large and mega industries prefer to buy their requirement from outside the state by paying Central Sales Tax (CST) @ 2 per cent rather than from the local industries where they have to pay VATranging from five to 13 per cent.” The industry body made a request for regular review of the MSME sector by the Chief Secretary at least once in a quarter and half yearly by the Chief Minister.
