Badli Industrial Estate Association which represents over 400 micro, small and medium enterprises has written to MSME Ministry demanding extension for migration to Udyam Portal from Udyog Aadhar by 3 months.
The Udyam portal similar to the Udyog Aadhar is a free, paperless online and instant registration portal.
A new process of classification and registration of MSMEs started from July 1, 2020. MSME Ministry in June’20 issued a notification introducing a new process for MSME registration (Udyam Registration). The notification stated that the existing MSME registrations, Udyog Aadhaar Number (UAN) or Enterprise Memorandum (EM) shall be invalid after March 31, 2021.
The gazette notification in June further stated the all enterprises are required to register online and obtain Udyam Registration Certificate. It further called for the existing enterprises which are already registered under UAN or EM to re-register in Udyam under the new system by the cut off date of March 31, 2021.
MSMEs which self certify their existence by registering on the government portal are eligible for a wide variety of benefits ranging from interest rate subsidy on bank loans, to exemption under direct tax laws, concession in electricity bills among others. Whereas the MSMEs which do not register and migrate to the new system are expected to lose out the benefits.
In view of the same, Badli Industrial Estate Association has requested an extension in the cut off date for migration by 3 months.
In its letter, the association stated, "In view of the difficulties arising out ofthe COVID-19 pandemic, an extension needs to be given to the MSMEs to migrate their Udyog Aadhars to Udyam Registration. It is a fact that partly due to the pandemic situation on account of COVID-19 and partly due to lack of awareness or laxity on the part of our members, many of them have not done the needful by the last date of 31.03.2021 prescribed for migration.
"As per information gathered by us, the situation throughout thecountry is no different as about 75 Lakh MSMEs registered under the old process are yet to migrate to the new system. Therefore, in order to make this process of migration seamless and without any break, it is requested that the last date of March 31, 2021 be extended by another period of 3 months."
As of date about 26.42 lakh MSMEs have registered on Udyam as per the data on MSME dashboard.
They have further requested for a non consolidation of unit wise registration of MSMEs as a consolidated registration results in being labelled as a large enterprise thereby leading to denial of benefits as MSME until the new system came in.
Under Udyam, all units of the same enterprise having one PAN number irrespective of the number of manufacturing and service activities it undertakes are collectively granted a common registration certificate.
Earlier GST registration was mandatory for Udyam Registration but now it is exempted for those units who are not eligible for GST registration.
Like Badli Industrial Estate Association, industry body Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises too has raised the issue of extension for Udyog Aadhar with the MSME Ministry in April.