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The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved a whopping $ 808 million ( ₹6,062.45 crore) World Bank assisted programme on a new scheme "Raising and Accelerating MSME Performance" (RAMP) which is expected to commence in the financial year 2022-23 (FY23).
From the total outlay of ₹6,062.45 crore - ₹3750 crore ($ 500 million) would be a loan from the World Bank and the remaining amount of ₹2312.45 crore ($ 308 million) will be funded by the Indian government.
Here are key highlights of the new scheme:
1. RAMP is a World Bank assisted Central Sector Scheme, supporting various Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID) Resilience and Recovery Interventions of the Ministry of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MoMSME). In addition to building the MoMSME’s capacity at the national level, the RAMP program will seek to scale up implementation capacity and MSME coverage in States.
2. The programme aims at improving access to market and credit, strengthening institutions and governance at the Centre and State, improving Centre-State linkages and partnerships, addressing issues of delayed payments, and greening MSMEs.
3. RAMP programme will address the generic and COVID-related challenges in the MSME sector by way of impact enhancement of existing MSME schemes, especially, on the competitiveness front. Further, the programme will bolster the inadequately addressed blocks of capacity building, handholding, skill development, quality enrichment, technological upgradation, digitization, outreach, and marketing promotion, amongst other things.
4. Through enhanced collaboration with States, RAMP will be a job-enabler, market promoter, finance facilitator, and will support vulnerable sections and greening initiatives.
5. RAMP will complement the Atma Nirbhar Bharat mission by fostering innovation and enhancement in industry standards, practices and providing the necessary technological inputs to the MSMEs to make them competitive and self-reliant, enhancing exports, substituting imports, and promoting domestic manufacturing.
6. RAMP programme with impacts across the country will directly or indirectly benefit all 63 million enterprises that qualify as MSMEs. However, a total of 5,55,000 MSMEs are specifically targetted for enhanced performance and, in addition, expansion of the target market to include service sectors and an increase of about 70,500 women MSMEs is envisaged.
7. The programme has identified two results areas after the preliminary missions and studies viz: (1) Strengthening Institutions and Governance of the MSME Program, and (2) Support to Market Access, Firm Capabilities, and Access to Finance. Funds would flow through RAMP into the Ministry’s budget against Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs) to support ongoing MoMSME programmes, focusing on improving market access and competitiveness.
8. Important component of RAMP is the preparation of Strategic Investment Plans (SIPs), in which all states/UTs, will be invited. The SIPs would include an outreach plan for identification and mobilisation of MSMEs under RAMP, identify key constraints and gaps, set milestones, and project the required budgets for interventions in priority sectors including renewable energy, rural & non-farm business, wholesale and retail trade, village and cottage industries, women enterprises etc.
9. All States/UTs will be invited to prepare SIPs and the proposals placed under SIPs will be funded based on theie appraisals. The funding would be based on objective selection criteria and the SIPs would be appraised and approved through a rigorous process set up in MoMSME.
10. Overall monitoring and policy overview of RAMP would be done by an apex National MSME Council, headed by Minister for MSME, including representation from various Ministries and supported by a secretariat. A RAMP programme committee headed by the Secretary of MoMSME to monitor the specific deliverables under RAMP. Further, for day-to-day implementation there would be programme management units at the National level and in States, comprising professionals and experts competitively selected from the industry to support MoMSME and States, to implement, monitor, and evaluate the RAMP programme.
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