The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday said Informal Micro Enterprises (IMEs) with an Udyam Assist Certificate will be treated as micro-enterprises under MSME for the purposes of priority sector lending classification.

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IMEs are those enterprises that are unable to get registered on the Udyam Registration Portal (URP) due to a lack of mandatory required documents, such as Permanent Account Number (PAN) or Goods and Services Tax Identification Number (GSTIN).

As a result, such enterprises are unable to avail the benefits of government schemes or programmes.

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Further, the government has clarified to the RBI that the turnover of enterprises exempted from filing returns under the provisions of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, is the sole criterion to be defined as IMEs for the purpose of UAP.

Hence, IMEs are those enterprises that are not covered in the Goods and Services Tax regime.

In a circular, the RBI said the government has specified that the certificate issued on the UAP to IMEs should be treated at par with Udyam Registration Certificate for the purpose of availing priority sector lending (PSL) benefits.

An interface has been created between the Udyam Assist Platform (UAP) and Udyam Registration Portal (URP) to enable the transition and migration of the IMEs from UAP to URP, once IMEs obtain the mandatorily required documents, the RBI said.

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"IMEs with an Udyam Assist Certificate shall be treated as Micro Enterprises under MSME for the purposes of PSL classification," the circular said.

The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises has launched the UAP to facilitate the formalisation of IMEs through the online generation of the Udyam Assist Certificate.

Registration on the platform is done with the assistance of designated agencies, which are RBI-regulated entities.