Countdown to budget: SMEs need growth impetus

India has 10 to 15 mn service MSME’s who run a wide variety of businesses. The challenges in growing their businesses are financial (funding, credit), customer acquisition (acquiring new customers, retaining existing ones) and regulatory compliance (forms, taxes). MSME’s need support from the Centre to scale-up. Budget 2018 can help by:

Providing uncollateralised credit: While lot of fintech organisations promise small-ticket personal loans, the ability to provide loans in the region of Rs. 2 to 10 lakhs using little collateral is beyond the ability of startups. The Govt can aid in scaling up business loans for service MSME’s.

Removing GST on promotional spends: Most MSME’s may come under the GST composition scheme that has business turnover limit of Rs. 1.5 crore currently. Budget 2018 can look to see if promotional spends by such entities are fully GST exempt. This will help them to further invest and grow. Once MSME’s cross this limit, they can easily start paying the additional 18% tax. 

DTNext gets talking to citizens and finds what he/she expects from the Union Budget to be presented on February 1

I am sorry to say that I have absolutely no hopes nor expectations from the Union Budget. I believe the government does not even have a rudimentary understanding of what the common people need, let alone propose a budget that would take care of basic life essentials and amenities. Maybe in this budget, there might be allocations earmarked for a lot more statues of deceased politicians, funding directed towards PR for the government, junkets for undeserving government workers who do anything but work. I think some funds might even be apportioned for printing new currency, which we do not require in the first place and which doesn’t solve anything. More than this year’s budget, we would like to know the unfiltered results of last year’s budgetary recommendations.