The Commerce and Industry Minister of India, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman welcomed the Union Budget 2017-18 on a happy note to the SMEs and the Make in India initiative by the Central Government. The Union Budget that was presented by the Finance Minister of India, Mr. Arun Jaitley, had provided great impetus to the manufacturing units under the SMEs and the Make in India along with an emphasis on the e-marketplace and the export infrastructure. Several measures have been put by the Finance Minister and the Commerce and Industry Minister of India with respect to the growth and development of the manufacturing units under the SMEs. Some of the key initiatives taken up by the Indian Government presented by the Union Budget 2017-18 include:
· A special scheme has been launched for the creation and boosting of employment in the leather and footwear industries. This proposal is to be implemented alongside the schemes in the textile and apparel sector of the SMEs in India.
· The long-standing demand of the startups has been accepted by the Government and the profit exemption to the startups which was 3 out of 5 years has been modified to 3 out of 7 years. With respect to the startups, the carry forward of the losses and the condition of the 51 percent of the voting rights under continuous holding has been put to relax which is on the condition that holding of the original promoter(s) would continue to exist.
· The liberalization of the policy of the FDI has been put to under consideration and the FIPB (Foreign Investment Promotion Board) is to be abolished in 2017-18.
· To make the MSME companies and industries more viable, income tax for these companies which will have an annual turnover of less than 50crores INR has been reduced to 25 per cent. As much as 96 percent of the MSMEs will be benefited from reduced taxation which will enable the MSMEs to become more competitive and reliable.
· MAT credit can be carried forward to a period of 15 years in comparison to the period of 10 years at the present.
· To create an ecosystem such that India could be a global hub for the manufacturing of electronics, a provision of 745 crores INR has been included in the incentive schemes like EDF and M-SIPS in the Union Budget of 2017-18. The allocation and the incentives have been incremented as the result of the increase in the number of proposals for investment.
· Rectification of the inverted duties in several SMEs like the textile, chemical & petrochemicals, renewable energy, and metals sector has been imposed. The duty changes have also been announced to improve the domestic manufacturing of the medical devices that have been used for the capital goods and digital transactions.
· The key pillar of the Make in India initiative – “Infrastructure”, has been planned to strengthen with great amounts of budgetary allocations. The total allocation that has been proposed for the development of the infrastructure during the tenure of 2017-18 is around 3,96,135crores INR.
· The e-marketplace of the government has been selected as the main driving force for the digitalization of the goods and services of the SMEs in 2017-18.