The Telangana government has said that the impact of the much talked about ₹20-lakh crore Atmanirbhar package has been minimal for the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) sector, which bore the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a letter to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman on Thursday, Telangana IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao said that over 80 per cent of the MSMEs in the State faced a negative impact due to the lockdown last year. “Over 25 per cent of them suffered significant loss in revenues,” he said.

He asked the Union Government to review the Aatmanirbhar relief package and make it work more realistically for the most affected constituents, including the MSMEs. Stating that ‘one size fits all’ kind of scheme is not the answer to the unique challenges of MSMEs, he felt that a solid financial grant would help the small firms that suffered heavy revenues in the pandemic.

“The manufacturing MSMEs continue to face challenges like supply chain disruptions, severe shortage of labour, and in some cases, a complete disruption in their customers preferences,” he said. He said two of the schemes that targeted MSMEs (one for the stressed ones and the other for innovate firms) were complete non-starters.

PLI scheme

He felt that the PLI (Production-Linked Incentive) scheme needed to be tweaked in order to benefit the MSMEs.

“In its present form, the scheme will only benefit large manufacturing companies. We need to mandate the large companies to establish a supply chain of domestic MSMEs and share the PLI benefits with them,” he said.

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