“You are talking about skilling for MSME, but what is happening in reality is that you are killing the MSMEs,” he said recently during a discussion on the budget in Parliament.
Small businesses are struggling to survive where many have closed down, he said. “You have to understand that about 47% of the country’s employment is provided by the MSME sector,” said the MP from Chennai North, referring to the importance of these small businesses.
He agreed that there is a need to create jobs, but added it was doubtful that the recent government initiatives would be able to address this issue.
The government has in the budget announced an internship scheme that will benefit one crore youth over a period of five years.
“You are saying that you are going to give 20 lakh jobs every year for the next five years, amounting to one crore youths going to be placed in 500 corporates. That roughly translates to about 4,000 persons per corporate. When I spoke to some of those corporates, they said that their total employed workforce itself is 4,000 and how they are going to accommodate 4,000 people in their companies,” said the MP.The need of the hour is not to have these people in the organised sector but to place them in the unorganised sector, which is seeing a huge demand for employment, he said, adding: “… and you have not focussed on anything there.” On the burden the goods and services tax (GST) puts on the people, Veeraswamy claimed that the indirect tax was too high on certain products that help the common man. “Also, when you are talking about GST, you find that on infant foods containing milk also, GST is being charged at the rate of 18%.” He also said that differently-abled people have been demanding a GST reduction on prosthetics like artificial limbs.
The Member of Parliament said many people have already raised the issue of 18% GST on health and life insurance premiums.
Nitin Gadkari, the Minister of Road Transport and Highways, recently wrote to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman requesting that this tax burden be reduced. “Levying GST on life insurance premium amounts to levying tax on the uncertainties of life,” Gadkari had said.
