Tribune News Service Amritsar February 26 The Covid-induced economic slowdown holding back demand in the market has offered enough time for the industrialists to focus on technical upgrade. So believes Samir Goyal a leading nut and bolt manufacturer in the city. He has set up an in-house research and development (R&D) facility in his factory to upgrade the quality of products to compete with the Chinese products. To utilise this lean patch he decided to focus on improving the quality of these products. He recently imported cold heading machine costing Rs17 lakh and threadrolling machine touching Rs10 lakh from Taiwan to qualitatively face the challenge posed by China. “Though our product is cheaper yet the customers ignore it for its inferior finish” he lamented. Being a mechanical engineer – he graduated from Pune University in 1992 – he would himself operate these machines to raise the standard of the products being manufactured in his unit. For this task he would be assisted by his son Madhav who is also a qualified mechanical engineer. Already 20 workers are employed. He feels that the import duty on machinery being raised from 7.50 per cent to 15 per cent in the recently passed budget would discourage the technical upgradation. “Those who wish to technically upgrade themselves are in for a shocker. It will dent Make in India scheme. It is not possible for the MSME to upgrade themselves with the quality of domestically available machines. An easy way is to import these machines from China which is the cheapest source of these machines. Otherwise these are available at exorbitant prices in European countries.” He asserted that the Union government was unaware of the basics of MSMEs and their groundwork is zero. “It is developing its policies for the MSMEs while keeping in view the Maharashtra and Gujarat model where the technology level is already high in comparison to the rest of the country.” The fact that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways allowed the MSMEs to supply construction material like torque steel after finding the attitude of the big firms non-cooperative is a beacon of hope for MSMEs. It might pave the way for renewed interest in them. On frequent price fluctuation of iron and steel Goyal accused big companies of raising prices in sync with the international market and in absence of any compelling domestic reason.

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