1,155 MSME vacancies for whopping 4.66 lakh candidates currently; these many placed in 2 years

Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Government job portal MSME Sampark launched by President Ram Nath Kovind to enable small business recruiters to hire skilled youth has been able to place 10,388 candidates in a little over two years since its launch, according to the available data. Started in June 2018 for trainees and students from 18 MSME Technology Centres across India and recruiters to connect with each other for bridging the talent gap, the portal has enabled placement of 400 candidates in companies on a monthly basis on an average, according to the real-time data published on the portal at the time of filing this report.

MSME Sampark has 81 job postings and 1,155 vacancies listed from 5,743 recruiters for over 4.66 lakh job seekers registered on the platform currently. This is up from 35,819 job seekers and 5,060 recruiters registered as on March 31, 2019, according to the MSME Ministry’s FY19 annual report. According to the portal, the 18 centers train around 1.5 lakh students annually.

MSMEs have been the biggest employer in the country after the agriculture sector and employs over 11 crore people which the government intends to increase to more than 15 crores in five years. Majority employment in the MSME sector has been in trade activities with 35 per cent (3.87 crores) share of jobs followed by 33 per cent (3.62 crores) in services while 32 per cent (3.6 crores) people are employed with manufacturing MSMEs, as per the annual report citing 2015-16 National Sample Survey. Moreover, in terms of the size of businesses, 97 per cent are employed with micro-enterprises followed by only 2.88 per cent working with small units and 0.16 per cent with medium enterprises.

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MSME suffering from the Covid impact with the loss of manpower and production were offering Rs 3 lakh crore Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme to “resume business and safeguard jobs,” the government had said in a presentation on scheme offered under the Atmanirbhar package launched in May this year. MSME sector has been among the five sectors adversely hit by Covid, RBI had said in a systemic risk survey published recently. 60 per cent respondents had said that the recovery for MSMEs, which suffered from massive labour migration, production halt, and cash flow crunch during the lockdown, will be bleak in the next six months.