NITI Aayog today released a report titled “Designing a Policy for Medium Enterprises”, offering a comprehensive roadmap for transforming medium enterprises into future growth engines of India’s economy. The report highlights the critical, yet under-leveraged role played by medium enterprises and outlines targeted interventions to unlock their full potential. The report delves into the structural skew in the MSME sector, which contributes approximately 29% to India’s GDP, accounts for 40% of exports, and employs over 60% of the workforce. Despite its critical role, the composition of the sector is disproportionately weighted: 97% of registered MSMEs are micro enterprises, 2.7% are small, and only 0.3% are medium enterprises.
However, this 0.3% of medium enterprises contributes nearly 40% of MSME exports, underscoring their untapped potential as scalable, innovation-led units. The report identifies medium enterprises as strategic actors in India's transition towards self-reliance and global industrial competitiveness under Viksit Bharat @2047. The report underscores key challenges faced by medium enterprises, including constrained access to tailored financial products, limited adoption of advanced technologies, inadequate R&D support, lack of sectoral testing infrastructure, and a mismatch between training programmes and enterprise needs. These limitations hinder their ability to scale and innovate.