Telangana: New MSME policy launched, Rs 4000 crores allotted for five years

Hyderabad: Telangana government plans to spend Rs 4,000 crore over the next five years towards various initiatives to develop Micro Small, Medium and Enterprises in the state, said Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, who unveiled the "Telangana MSME Policy 2024" on Wednesday.

According to the new policy, to accelerate the growth of MSMEs, the state government has identified six trust areas for improvement – improving availability, accessibility and affordability of land, facilitating access to finance, ensuring easy access to raw materials, improving flexibility in labour markets, encouraging adoption of technology and enhancing access to markets.

The policy said the government is aiming to see that over 25,000 new MSMEs are established in the state in the next five years.

The policy facilitates SHG’s (self help groups) to transition to MSMEs by providing end to end support structures besides strengthening the state as a leading exporter in the country with an emphasis on import substitution.

The Telangana government is drafting a procurement policy with preferential procurement from MSMEs, particularly from SC/ST and women owned enterprises, the policy said.

The department of industries and commerce will, within three months of notification of the procurement policy, create a mechanism to monitor the implementation of the preferential procurement scheme, it further said.

To promote the adoption of green technologies, the government will provide incentives like an additional 15 per cent floor area if the MSME has a solar photovoltaic plant installed or a solid waste management plant for treatment of total generated waste or if the building has 3 to 5 star rating on green building for integrated habitat assessment.

The policy also said of the five MSME parks to be constructed between ORR (Outer Ring Road) and RRR (Regional Ring Road), at least one will have dedicated support to facilitate MSME to acquire ZED (Zero Defect Zero Effect ) bronze certification.

The government aims to increase e-commerce penetration in MSMEs by encouraging the participation of sellers on the open network of digital commerce (ONDC) portal and government E marketplace portal.

Telangana government will conduct awareness workshops for entrepreneurs in collaboration with industry associations and the government of India to educate small sellers and businesses about ONDC, it further said.

Will continue good initiatives of previous govts: Revanth Reddy

Revanth Reddy said his regime would continue the good initiatives taken by previous governments and would improve upon them by making corrections, if necessary, in policies.

Speaking after launching the state's MSME policy here, he said his government would continue to implement the assurances given to MSMEs by the previous government on incentives, as governance is a continuous process.

Hyderabad can now boast of the IT industry and infrastructure projects like the city's Outer Ring Road (ORR) because the Congress government in undivided Andhra Pradesh headed by Y S Rajasekhara Reddy continued the IT revolution brought in by his predecessor N Chandrababu Naidu, he said.

The IDPL (Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd) established in Hyderabad by the Congress government at the Centre in the 1960s led to growth of the pharma industry in the city, he said.

"Congress party has experience in governance. We don't have any pretense in matters of governance, establishment of industries and in government policies. We will continue whoever has done good work. Even if there is some difficulty in continuing good work, we will face those difficulties and take forward those policies," he said.

At the same time, if there are any issues that hurt the state's interests, the government will not hesitate to remove such policies and come up with new ones, he said.

The government is holding a meeting with IT, pharma and other industrialists to generate a corpus fund for the proposed Young India Skills University from them, he said.

Referring to farmers' suicides, Reddy said one of the reasons for their distress is that many family members depend on agriculture though the land owned by them is less.

He suggested that some of the family members should take up jobs, businesses and other avenues of livelihood, while others continue to depend on agriculture.

His government is providing free power and others, besides carrying out a crop loan waiver for the benefit of farmers, Reddy said.