KOZHIKODE: The state government has taken many steps to make the state entrepreneurial-friendly, removing many hurdles before starting a small scale business, say authorities.
The ideal climate has also resulted in hatching out as many as 10,318 SSI units in the district..
The Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) is studying problems entrepreneurs face and help overcome them.
The licence and clearance certificate of many departments like Pollution Control Board and Fire and Safety has to be in hand to establish a new venture. The second one could be funding.
"To solve these two problems, the government has introduced many laws. For example, as part of the Investment Promotion Facilitation Act 2018, around seven regulations have been amended. There are mainly three highlights in this Act," said I. Gireesh, manager of District Industries Centre, Kozhikode.
According to him, the first and foremost is that the license and clearance are valid for five years. Earlier, it was for a year, creating a lot of problems for the entrepreneur.
Secondly, there was a time when business plans were not accomplished well due to many uncertainties like the time of license and clearance certificate granted. Now the clearance certificate has to be issued within 30 days, or it can be deemed as granted.
"There is a common platform to forward the application online called K-Swift (Kerala Single Window Interface for fast and Transparent Clearance). If the application is filed through K-Swift, the software will automatically generate a deemed certificate of the license after 30 days," he said.The third is, the local bodies or panchayat can not issue the stop memo without proper investigation. If a complaint is registered, the issue has to be crosschecked with experts and remedies found.
If the experts fail, a stop memo could be issued.
"Financial assistance is also taken care of. If the bank cannot provide a loan, block-level bankers committee and district-level review committee will solve the matter. Credit guarantee trust fund for small micro-enterprises, a scheme which offers collateral-free loan up to Rs 1 crore, is also available for entrepreneurs," said Mr Gireesh.
