The Budget 2025 introduces transformative measures—including enhanced credit guarantees, the ME-Card initiative, BharatTradeNet— to empower MSME

The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, the backbone of the Indian economy, plays a crucial role in India’s socio-economic development by contributing significantly to employment, industrial production, and exports. Spanning across diverse industries, including agribusiness, manufacturing, retail and services, the MSME sector fosters entrepreneurship, innovation and growth. According to the Ministry of MSME, the sector comprises over 63 million enterprises, out of which 39 million are micro-enterprises.

This sector accounts for 30 per cent of the country’s GDP and contributes around 45 per cent to India’s total exports.  In the fiscal year ending September 2024, the sector added 11 million jobs bringing total employment to about 121 million from 110 million in the previous fiscal. It is projected that the MSME sector will grow to USD 1 trillion by 2028 providing immense and diverse opportunities across industries and supply chain systems.

However, despite its significance, MSMEs in India are plagued by multiple challenges, such as inadequate infrastructure, regulatory and compliance burden, gaps in policy implementation, limited credit access, technological lag and digital illiteracy, delays in payments and cash flow problems, lack of skilled workforce, sustainability challenges and limited market reach.

To boost sectoral competitiveness and address these issues, the Union Budget 2025 introduced several reforms and policy measures designed to simplify regulations, promote digitalisation, ease financial constraints, enhance export promotion and support technological upgradation. Some Budget highlights are as follows:

Increase in Credit Guarantee cover

The Government has also doubled the Credit Guarantee cover for........

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