Of the 29,769 Goan business enterprises registered with theUnion ministry of micro, small & medium enterprises (MSMEs), 22% or 6,578 are Women-owned entities, stated the data released by the Centre on Thursday. As expected, a significant number of women-owned MSMEs, 6,467, are in the micro category.
What is intriguing is that just 7% of the 111 medium-category enterprises are owned and managed by women entrepreneurs. Medium-category enterprises are businesses that have an annual turnover of up to Rs 100 crore, and in Goa just eight medium business houses have women at their helm.
The Centre has taken a number of steps to support MSMEs, particularly women-owned enterprises, and has launched special drives for the registration of women-owned MSMEs under theUdyamRegistration portal.
India has 28 lakh women-owned MSMEs registered and classified under Udyam since July 2020, of which 98% fall under the micro category.
The Union ministry implements the Prime Ministers EMPLOYMENT Generation Programme (PMEGP), which is a major credit-linked subsidy initiative aimed at generating self-employment opportunities, and of the total PMEGP beneficiaries, 39% are women.
To widen the scope of MSMEs, retail and wholesale traders have been included in theMSMEcategory.