Government think tank Niti Aayog is working on a programme to improve India’s penetration into global value chains for the growth of domestic micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), CEO B.V.R. Subrahmanyam said on Wednesday.

Observing that MSMEs are more affected by regulations than large companies, Subrahmanyam said steps have been taken by the government towards deregulation, and a task force under the cabinet secretary is working on it.

Subrahmanyam was addressing a gathering after launching the Digital Excellence for Growth and Enterprise, or Dx-EDGE, a platform to empower MSMEs with the tools, knowledge and ecosystem needed to become future-ready, competitive and resilient.

Dx-EDGE is a national initiative spearheaded by CII with the support of NITI Frontier Tech Hub (NITI FTH) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

The Niti Aayog CEO said it is a fact that some of the big manufacturers have moved to India, and cited the example of mobile phones, terming it a success story of the PLI (production-linked incentive) initiative of the Centre.

“To penetrate into global value chains, you need to have the ecosystem here, which means the intermediate routes.

“They are not final products. They go into some other product. The bulk of global manufacturing is of intermediate products. And who makes these intermediate products, they are largely MSMEs,” Subrahmanyam said.

Registered MSMEs

Registered MSMEs in the country are expected to touch the 9 crore mark by 2029.

More than 6 crore MSMEs are currently registered under the Udyam and Udyam Assist (UA) portals, Mercy Epao, joint secretary in the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises, said at an Assocham event.

“We are trying to formalise all the MSMEs in the country and hopefully by 2029 we will reach 9 crore,” Assocham said in a statement quoting Epao.