Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: In order to attract micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as supply chain vendors, Indian Railways has reduced its vendor application fee. From Rs 1.5 lakh charged from MSMEs applying for approval as vendors with the Railways’ Research Designs & Standards Organisation (RDSO), which undertakes standardisation work for the railway sector, the amount has been reduced by 93 per cent to Rs 10,000 for identified safety items, Railways Ministry said. For businesses other than MSMEs, the fee was cut 94 per cent from Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 15,000.
“Railway has taken one more decision in this (ease of doing business) direction by reducing the vendor application fee that was being taken for applying for approval of vendor with RDSO for identified safety items,” the ministry said in a statement. “Special provision of the lower fee is kept to encourage MSMEs…This initiative shall further reduce the cost of business for industry and give impetus to Make in India. It will also benefit Railway by attracting more vendors in its supply chain.”
Importantly, the reduction in fee came nearly eight months after the RDSO was declared the first institution as Standard Developing Organisation (SDO) under ‘One Nation One Standard’ mission on Bureau of Indian Standards on June 1, 2021. “Some of the major benefits that will flow out of this recognition by Bureau of Indian Standards, under the BIS SDO Recognition Scheme, include Larger participation of Industry / Vendors / MSMEs / Technology Developers in IR Supply Chain,” Consumer Affairs Ministry had said.
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Moreover, the participation of MSME, academia, users, recognized labs, test houses, industry, vendors, technology developers in the Indian Railways supply chain etc., in the process of standard making from the very early stages is set to reduce the time between development of standards and their ground adaptation or user utilisation, the ministry had noted.
For the One Nation One Standard vision, BIS had launched a scheme that provided for recognition of SDO. With this, BIS aimed at aggregating and integrating the domain-specific expertise of organizations engaged in standards development in their specific sectors, and enable convergence of all standard development activities in the country.
Railways on Thursday also said that a unified Vendor Approval System for single-interface approval of vendors was also implemented for vendors. The interface also offered free online access to all the related details, drawings, specifications, and tracking of the application status online.
The government was also reportedly working on integrating all procurement made by Railways to the MSME-dominated public procurement portal Government eMarketplace. Last June, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal had said in a performance review meeting of GeM with officers of the procurement marketplace and Department of Commerce that the integration may see around Rs 50,000 crore of annual procurement by Railways done online.
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