Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: 99 per cent of the complaints received so far on the government’s MSME grievance redressal portal — Creation and Harmonious Application of Modern Processes for Increasing the Output and National Strength (Champions) — have been resolved, Shailesh Kumar Singh, Development Commissioner, MSME Ministry said on Wednesday. Addressing an Assocham event on ‘enabling Indian MSMEs to go global’, Singh said a large number of more than 40,000 grievances registered on the Champions portal, which was launched on June 1, 2020, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were related to credit issues.

Based on the data from the ministry’s annual report for the financial year 2021-22, 41,742 grievances were received on the portal as of December 31, 2021. Champions portal was among the initiatives announced by the government post pandemic such as ECLGS scheme, subordinate debt scheme, reclassification of MSMEs, Rs 6,000 RAMP programme, and more. The portal was launched to help MSMEs register their grievances around finance, delayed payments, raw materials procurement, labour issues, regulatory permissions etc., and seek their redressal.

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The portal routes complaints subject-wise to respective branch/bureau/office heads in the MSME Ministry to attend them within three days. The matter “should not remain inconclusive after seven days” AK Sharma, former MSME Secretary had said in a note launching the trial version of the Champions portal in 2020. 

“The portal will create a huge repository of data related to problems around marketing, funding, export, government payments, banks etc., faced by MSMEs. Over a period of time, the platform might create an artificial intelligence kind of a thing where we would know, for example, in which state MSMEs face more problems related to credit and against which institution,” Rajiv Chawla, Chairman at the MSME association — IamSMEofIndia had told Financial Express Online. 

Importantly in October 2020, the government integrated the portal with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to get “social media insights relating to MSME”, “know the pulse of entire MSME sector without stakeholders going to the portal”, “know emotions of people involved with or dependent on MSMEs in real-time” and more, MSME Ministry had said in a statement. The ministry had also noted that “AI has started giving the MSME Ministry social media insights relating to MSMEs for its policy action through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Blogs, Forums and online news which were not available to us on a holistic basis.”