In a bid to improve the ease of doing business and to remove regulatory hurdles, the Tamil Nadu government is planning to do away with physical inspection and introduce self-certification for the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), a senior state government official said.

"The next step in our entire effort in what we call 'Government 2.0' is to do away with the unnecessary compliances and allow the industries to file self-certification and also do away with inspections which are not really required," said Rajendra Kumar, Principal Secretary, MSME Department, Government of Tamil Nadu.

He was delivering the inaugural address at the 12th edition of TN Manufacturing Summit 2019 organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here on Monday.

The theme of the event was 'Taking the manufacturing to the next level through Industry 4.0'.

Speaking to BusinessLine after the inaugural session, Kumar said the initiatives mentioned would hopefully be implemented from next year.

Highlighting the role played by the government during his speech earlier, Kumar said the initiatives have brought mindset change in government departments in dealing with industries and also offer a conducive environment for industries to grow.

He also said the Business Facilitation Act passed by the Tamil Nadu government has re-engineered government departments, simplified the application forms and reduced the burden for industries.

On single window system

Lauding the single window system for MSME, Kumar said, "In the last one year, 930 MSMEs applied through this portal out of which 855 approvals have been issued without any need to visit any of the government offices or submit any documents offline."

However, he also added that MSME sector in Tamil Nadu is stuck in a time warp and most companies are still following a manual process.

Delivering a special address, Sandeep Sinha, CEO, TAFE Limited said Industry 4.0 is nothing but a confluence of the physical and digital world.

Urging businesses not to over complicate Industry 4.0, Sinha said: it is simply a combination of our ability to generate data digitally with accuracy, able to transmit high volume data at low cost, store data at cheaper rates because of cloud and improved ability to make sense of the data.

Urging MSMEs to embrace technology, Sinha said: "Technology is not that expensive or complicated, it's very much within your reach, and there is no better place to adapt to technology than in Tamil Nadu."

In his address, S Ganesh Mani, Director- Production, Hyundai India said that technology had changed the trend of identifying and reaching the customers. It also reduced the lead time taken to reach the market drastically.

"Industry 4.0 is not just limited to manufacturing but related to how products are produced, delivered and sold," S Chandramohan, Chairman, CII Tamil Nadu said in his special address.

He also added that confidentiality of data, absence of data accuracy and mindset of companies are some of the challenges affecting the technology adoption.

Related Topics