AHMEDABAD: Gujarat’s women owned manufacturing MSME sector recorded a sharp contraction in new registrations after peaking at 1,02,694 in 2023-24, with registrations falling to 60,857 in 2024-25 and further to 49,955 in 2025-26, a 51.4% decline from the five-year peak.
At the same time, the number of women owned manufacturing MSMEs shown as closed on the Udyam Registration Portal climbed steadily to a five year high of 287 in 2025-26.
The government data, however, does not establish that these 287 closures came from the MSMEs registered during the same year, and therefore the figures cannot be used to calculate a conventional business failure rate or to subtract closures from registrations.
The five-year data shows 2,63,581 registrations and 748 closures, but these are separate annual portal counts and do not represent a single linked cohort of enterprises.
The decline becomes particularly stark after the 2023-24 spike. Gujarat registered 22,892 women owned manufacturing MSMEs in 2021-22, 27,183 in 2022-23 and then 1,02,694 in 2023-24. Registrations subsequently dropped by 40.7% in 2024-25 and another 17.9% in 2025-26.
The closure numbers moved in the opposite direction: from just 38 in 2021-22, they rose to 56 in 2022-23, 160 in 2023-24, 207 in 2024-25 and 287 in 2025-26. The latest figure is more than 7.5 times the 2021-22 level.
The picture is more complex on the financing front. Under the Credit Guarantee Scheme implemented through CGTMSE, guarantees approved for women led MSEs in Gujarat rose from 3,977 in 2021-22 to 18,155 in 2025-26, an increase of nearly 4.6 times.
The value of guarantees approved jumped even more sharply, from ₹531 crore to ₹5,512 crore, more than tenfold over the five year period.
Gujarat’s share of the national value of women led MSE guarantees also remained substantial, reaching about 7.5% of the national ₹73,565 crore approved in 2025-26. The state accounted for 18,155 of the 5,75,651 guarantees approved nationally that year.
But the increase in credit guarantees did not coincide with a sustained rise in new manufacturing registrations. The data therefore shows a clear divergence: formal credit guarantee support expanded sharply while women-owned manufacturing MSME registrations fell from their 2023-24 peak. The figures alone, however, do not establish a causal relationship between the two trends.
Under the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme, Gujarat assisted 2,512 women led manufacturing micro enterprises in 2021-22, but the number fell to 901 in 2025-26, a decline of about 64%. The estimated employment linked to these assisted units similarly fell from 20,096 to 7,208 over the period.
The Margin Money subsidy disbursed under the programme fell from ₹201.64 crore in 2021-22 to ₹120.43 crore in 2025-26, despite a temporary rise to ₹214.78 crore in 2023-24. Gujarat’s share of the national PMEGP subsidy fell from about 21% in 2021-22 to 16.9% in 2025-26.
The portal data reports employment of 1,27,544 in 2021-22, 1,46,983 in 2022-23, 2,52,055 in 2023-24, 1,92,673 in 2024-25 and 33,21,956 in 2025-26 for Gujarat’s women owned manufacturing MSMEs.
The extraordinary jump in the final year’s reported employment should not be presented as 33.2 lakh new jobs created in Gujarat.
The government table describes these as employment figures reported on Udyam and Udyam Assist, and annual figures may reflect employment reported by registered enterprises rather than newly created jobs. Consequently, adding the five annual employment figures to claim 40.4 lakh jobs created would also be misleading.
The five year record therefore presents a sharper and more nuanced picture than a simple “women MSMEs are growing” or “women MSMEs are shutting down” narrative.
Gujarat saw a dramatic surge in women owned manufacturing registrations in 2023-24, followed by a 51.4% fall from that peak by 2025-26. Closures simultaneously reached their highest recorded level in the five year series.
At the same time, CGTMSE-backed credit guarantees expanded substantially, while PMEGP-supported manufacturing units and subsidy assistance declined.
The most defensible conclusion from the government data is therefore that Gujarat’s women owned manufacturing MSME ecosystem has experienced a sharp post 2023-24 slowdown in new registrations alongside rising portal-reported closures, even as formal credit guarantee support has expanded.
The data does not, by itself, establish why registrations declined, why closures increased, or whether the closures relate to the enterprises registered during the same five year period.