On Tuesday, The PM announced the Aatma Nirbhar Bharat package that focussed on making India self-reliant.
Today, Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman said, “The aim of Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan is to spur growth and to build a self-reliant India. Our intention is to make local brands and take them on a global level.”
The major highlights are given below:
- The Finance Minister announced collateral-free loans for the Ministry of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises up to Rs 3 lakh crore. For the stressed MSMEs, she further announced Rs 20,000 crore liquidity to benefit around 2 lakh MSMEs.
- In the third scheme for the MSME sector, the finance minister said that a fund of funds will be set up for the MSMEs that are viable. The fund of funds will have a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore. The scheme will help the MSME increase its size.
- The investment limit which defined an MSME has been revised upwards to Rs.1 crore as compared to Rs. 25 lakh earlier.
- Global tenders to be disallowed in government procurement up to Rs 200 crore. This will make India self-reliant and will also boost the make-in-India initiative.
- All receivables for SMEs to be cleared within the next 45 days since trade fairs and exhibitions may not be held post coronavirus.
- To ease financial stress as businesses get back to work, the Government decides to continue EPF support for business & workers for 3 more months providing a liquidity relief of Rs 2,500 crores.
- In order to provide more take-home salary for employees and to give relief to employers in payment of PF, EPF contribution is being reduced for businesses & workers for 3 months.
- The government launches a Rs 30,000 crore Special Liquidity Scheme for non-banking financial companies, microfinance companies, housing finance companies.
- A liquidity infusion of Rs.90,000 crore for all power distribution companies has been announced as the electricity distribution companies are facing a serious crisis.
- Due date of all IT returns for FY20 has been extended to November 30.
