Union Budget 2025: Retail body Retailers Association of India (RAI) has called for measures to provide low-cost financing to retailers in next year’s Budget to be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in February. In its list of recommendations for the next Union Budget, the RAI said there is a need to offer lower interest rates to retailers through the special announcement in the Budget to ensure more financing easy for retail businesses.

“The government should allocate a special fund and formulate a special merchant financing scheme with SIDBI to help millions of independent retailers across the country by declaring low-cost loans and easing certain industry guidelines,” the association said.

Currently, retail and wholesale traders, who were included in the category MSMEs definition in July 2021 and have been allowed to register on the Udyam portal, are eligible for access to credit only under priority sector lending standards.

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RAI said the government should extend all other benefits offered by Udyam certification to MSME to retail and wholesale traders as well.

Benefits other than access to credit available to Udyam registered MSMEs are multiple number of activities including manufacturing or services, or both can be specified or added in a single registration, units can register on portals such as the GeM (Government eMarketplace) public procurement platform, monitoring of deferred payments. the Samadhaan portal and the TReDS invoice remittance platform, etc.

The association also made other demands, namely reducing taxes to strengthen overall consumer confidence, considering the food and beverage retail sector as a priority and an essential service, accelerating national policy retail to facilitate business, reintroduce EPCG (export promotion capital goods). a program for the retail sector to create modern infrastructure, free or subsidized distribution of EDC (electronic data capture) machines to boost acceptance of digital payments, and much more.

The retail sector represents approximately 10 percent of the IndiaThe GDP (gross domestic product) of . THE walk This sum is estimated to increase from around $1 trillion currently to $2 trillion by 2032.

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