The policy at the outset looks very vague and does not screws issues and does not give solutions. As some one above says it is not only advt. You will please note that most of the SMEs are family owned and are in to 2nd generation. More than growth it is survival. When you talk about growth it has to be vertical and requires lot of finance due to the change in the scenario due globalization. Most of the fin. institutions do not find it feasible to fund the growth due to low asset base as more than 90% of the SMEs are either 2 tire or 3 tire units and specially auto industries are open to vagaries of market. Unless the policy has guidelines for financial help, the policy will be only on paper and it is seen that not even 2% of SMEs in manufacturing sector will survive.

Your article is mainly suggesting to continue advertising for future growth. It mainly applies to those they are making FMCG and apparels , it's agreed that they need to look at technology up-gradation , trends that are coming in near future etc. etc for their future survival. While advertising and PR is one important activity . But the real failure of SMEs are not due to the absence of the above mentioned two items. It's primarily the absence of bandwidth in all departments. Most of SME s are primarily promoter driven enterprise, some starts with passion , some starts with gained knowledge and experience in their own domain fields after having worked in larger companies , third category of SMEs are like - they have read or heard about certain field of growth , instead of an employment , they become employer by pooling their little money. The initial success is sure for most of them ,because it's only making and selling , the real business issues starts after two balance sheets , SMEs doesn't anticipate the following 1. Notices will start flying into his premises from all statutory department authorities like sales tax , incomeTax , PF, ESI , pollution contra boards , Electricity board , labour unions etc etc. ( all of these agencies hide their NO-ENTRY boards under the table hence SME didn't realize , when goes to his table to answer his notice , then he will remove and show his NO-ENTRY board,SME holds his head ,because it's a surprise) penalties and payouts will become routine 2.Due to absence of cost accountancy , they didn't take into costing all above expenses, 3. Senior trained Employee attrition While 20 different government agencies are hammering him , banker comes in and serve notice to him to pay back all dues in time , if not penalties combined with reduced DP for operations. If incase , his customers are happened to be another SME or mid size industry , his debtors will obviously will go beyond 90days , if he happened to supply to large scale units , their audits have held all supplier payments , therefore money supply has become very tight , cash flow is not matching to projections made , therefore he cuts his budget for advertising and PR activities , followed by less increments to employees , eventually senior trained employees will leave and go , in their absence promoter puts himself into the shoes of left employee for committed deliveries on hoping that his sincerity will be recognized by his customer and pay in time.( SME doesn't know that Ambani n Biyani are not going to see him in his life time, their employee is working for their company based on blue book given to him , he is only looking for his own recognition to jump to next company ) Now , he got into senior employee shoes , he has no time to manage other things and hands it over to a consultant to manage , finally consultant manages to make him pay half of notice served and charge 10% fee on it.

These expenses have not been taken into costing, they happened to pop out after two years, therefore all his profits that were shown on balance sheet got eroded, but he paid income tax promptly ( if has not paid banker would not allow him to touch his money at all ). Now it's BIG gamble, current year if he shows losses, banker will withdraw his support, if shown profits (over and above losses) he will have to pay income tax just on time. To pay this he will borrow from NBFCs without collateral. The point that I am trying to drive here is SME fails not because of advertising, it's because of erring agencies and lack of industrial policy support. In my opinion, SME s must have single window for replying all government authorities related quires and notices. SME s can never afford to have a bandwidth of managing so many agencies. If MSMEs are doing fine and are able to service the loans that were taken by them, it's best thing for the country. My suggestion of single window for SMEs will benefit everyone involved at macro level .