Economic Survey MSME and GST

The Economic Survey 2025–26 places Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) at the centre of India’s medium-term growth strategy, emphasising productivity, formalisation, and ease of doing business as critical growth enablers. While the Goods and Services Tax (GST) has undeniably advanced formalisation and revenue buoyancy, the Survey implicitly signals a growing misalignment between the GST compliance architecture and the operational realities of MSMEs. Rising procedural intensity, credit-related frictions, and compliance uncertainty are no longer peripheral concerns but structural constraints on firm growth and productivity. Against this backdrop, the case for deep GST compliance simplification emerges not as an administrative refinement, but as a necessary economic reform to sustain formalisation, unlock MSME scalability, and realise the broader growth objectives articulated in the Survey.