Budget 2025-26: Assocham Calls for Enhanced Business Environment and Improved Credit Access for MSMEs
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New Delhi, Dec 30 (NationPress) To further empower micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and ensure ease of doing business, there is a need to create integrated infrastructure townships and universities focused on promoting skill development and entrepreneurship training to stimulate growth within the sector, Assocham mentioned on Monday.
During its pre-budget discussion with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the leading trade body proposed several initiatives to boost investment, including broadening the reach of presumptive taxation to MSMEs and emerging sectors such as data centers, data hosting, and cloud computing.
Sanjay Nayar, President of Assocham, noted that this strategy would ease compliance burdens for these taxpayers by calculating income based on a predetermined framework, thus minimizing the risk of tax disputes and litigation.
He added, “This also allows businesses to bypass complicated audits and bookkeeping, as they can determine their tax obligations in advance, thereby enabling improved financial planning and management.”
Nayar further emphasized the importance of establishing integrated infrastructure townships for MSMEs, which would be a modernized version of the previous Industrial Estate Development Programme across the nation.
These townships could encompass shared testing and R&D facilities, financial institutions, common service providers, labor housing, educational institutions, healthcare facilities, training centers for workers, and export assistance centers, among others.
Despite the existence of policies for collateral-free loans, MSMEs continue to struggle with credit access.
Banks frequently demand personal property collateral and impose elevated interest rates, obstructing access to credit.
Nayar asserted that it should be a requirement for banks to periodically disclose the quantity and value of collateral-free loans issued.
The forthcoming budget should introduce additional funding aimed at boosting credit access for MSMEs, similar to the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) established during the Covid-19 pandemic, which served as a crucial support mechanism for the growth of MSMEs.
