Indian National Congress (INC) Member of Parliament Jairam Ramesh on Monday hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA government at the Centre in a series of messages on X (formerly Twitter) saying the BJP policies had crippled the MSMEs in the Kongu region.
He said that “manmade disaster” of demonetisation, GST, and unplanned COVID lockdowns had hit the MSMEs in Tamil Nadu that had almost 10 lakh units before the BJP came to power in the Centre.
Demonetisation hit cash flow for the MSMEs and in Tiruppur as many as 1,000 small factories were closed and textile exports were just ₹26,000 crore as against the expected ₹30,000 crore.
“As Rahul Gandhi has been consistently highlighting through the last ten years, and as he reiterated during the INDIA bloc’s mega rally in Coimbatore on April 12, MSMEs in the Kongu Nadu region, the State’s industrial heartland, are still reeling from the Centre’s mismanagement,” he said.
Further , the “overly complex” tax (GST) regime was brought in hastily that increased the effective tax rate for large enterprises to 28% and almost doubled the effective tax rate for the MSMEs. “By 2019, almost 50,000 MSMEs in Tamil Nadu were forced to shut shop; More than 5.19 lakh people lost their jobs in 2017-18 alone...,” he said.
The lockdown (because of COVID) “devastated MSME balance sheets and severely constrained demand, even as the migrant crisis constrained labour supply,” he said in his message.
“At the national level, the Modi Sarkar’s crony capitalism has meant a deliberate neglect of MSME issues,” he said. In the Kongu region, GST refunds amounting to nearly ₹1,200 crore are pending for around 2,000 viscose fabric weaving units, close to 500 units have closed because of the pending refund and the Coimbatore District Small Industries Association has sought a cut in GST rates on job work undertaken by micro and small engineering units from the current 12% to either 5% or nil, said Mr. Jairam Ramesh on X.
“The unemployment crisis of today’s India is a Modi-made creation,” he said.
