Minister of MSME and Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari on Friday (2 July) announced revised guidelines for MSMEs with the inclusion of Retail and Wholesale trades as MSMEs.

In a Tweet, he said under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi, the government committed to strengthening MSME and making them engines for economic growth.

Gadkari said the revised guidelines would benefit 2.5 crore retail and wholesale traders. He said retail and wholesale trade were left out of the ambit of MSME; now, under the revised guidelines, the retail and wholesale business will also benefit from priority sector lending under RBI guidelines.

With the revised guidelines, the Retail and wholesale traders can now register on Udyam Registration Portal.

Recently, the Modi government also simplified the registration process for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and that they will now only need an Aadhaar and PAN to register.

And as of 30 April, public and private sector banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) have sanctioned as many as 2,31,425 loans worth Rs 76,670 to the MSMEs under the centre’s 59-minute loan approval scheme.

Launched by Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi in November 2018, the scheme offers term loans, Mudra loans and working capital loans to MSMEs to purchase plant and machinery, technology upgrade, product expansion, purchase of raw materials, infrastructure development, et cetera.