Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday slammed the Centre for distracting the country's present with theatrics and 'toying' with the future, referring to the All India Council of Association (AICA), representing around 170 MSME associations that sought immediate intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the erosion of working capital and rising prices of raw materials.
"Today, MSME sector employers are themselves facing unemployment, PM is distracting India's present with theatrics and 'toying' with the future," said the Congress leader in a tweet today.
In a representation to PM Modi, AICA had said that the sector is facing huge challenges due to erosion of working capital on account of the huge rise in prices of raw materials like steel, iron ore, aluminium, copper, plastics, PVC, paper, and chemicals.
The association had suggested eight points to overcome the crisis which included protection against escalation in prices for some period, public sector enterprises be instructed to accept cancellation of orders from MSMEs with no penalty/ blacklisting, a formula be derived for price escalation and quota for MSMEs at concessional price.
Earlier too, Rahul Gandhi had accused the Centre's major economic policies like Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation for destroying the MSMEs in the country.
A massive crippling blow delivered to the economy was demonetisation. It devastated small and medium industries because you are dependent on the cash flow," Gandhi had said while addressing a gathering of MSME representatives in Coimbatore, in January this year.
After the presentation of the Union Budget in February, Gandhi had described it as "crony-centric", and had said the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) were given no low-interest loans or GST relief which meant that the employers of India's largest workforce were "betrayed".
( With inputs from ANI )
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