Process afoot to capture MSME trade data

India has begun a process to capture the country-wise and commodity-wise trade done by micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) to have real time data of their exports and imports. The MSME ministry plans to get detailed data of exports done by such firms as against broad data, which is captured currently, as they account for around 40% of India's total goods exports.

There are about 25 million MSMEs registered on the Udyam portal, of which around 193,000 are engaged in exports at present. "There is a linkage of the Udyam portal with ICEGATE but that is now being augmented because we want more granular data country-wise and commodity-wise as we get only broad export figures right now," said an official aware of the development. The linkage of the two portals is crucial as MSMEs account for a large value of exports of readymade garments, leather products, processed foods and engineering goods, while in sectors like sports goods, they account for almost the entire outbound shipment. Currently, the information on exports and imports is provided by the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S) in which specific data on MSME sector is not available.

Anil Bhardwaj, secretary general, Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME), said that product-wise data will help industry gain concessions in India's free trade agreement negotiations and help improve its market access, policy making and competitiveness.

This assumes significance as many of India's FTAs have separate chapters on MSMEs. "We will get state and cluster-wise data, which would also help formulate export promotion schemes," Bhardwaj said.

India, with an export share of 21-22% of GDP, aspires to increase it to 30%.