Banks in Haryana will open specialised small and medium enterprises (SME) branches in all districts of Haryana during the year. The step will be in conformity with the guidelines of the Reserve Bank of India, Talking to FE here on Monday, chairman and managing director of Punjab National Bank, KC Chakrabarty agreed so far SME branches in Haryana were confined only to some districts. For instance, Gurgaon and Faridabad have seven SME branches each. However, there is no SME branch in districts like Rewari, Palwal, Mewat, Narnaul, Fatehabad, Jind and even big districts like Sirsa, Hisar and Rohtak.
It is worth mentioning that the RBI in various meetings of empowered committee on SMEs has been telling banks to open at least one SME branch in each district.
The move to open at least one specialised SME branch in each of the 17 Haryana districts comes at a time when the state is witnessing resurgence of SME sector with a growth of 37 % from Rs 4,833 crore as on June 2007 to Rs 6,618 crore as on June 30, 2008. In fact, performance of banks under SME sector in Haryana has been remarkable with 37% growth surpassing target of 20 %.
Enquiries reveal that Haryana offers excellent potential for SME business. For instance, under small enterprises by June 30 this year, the total outstanding amount was Rs 4,079.82 crore of which 3,375.8 crore was under manufacturing sector and Rs 704.02 crore was under service sector. The share of credit to micro and small enterprises sector in net bank credit was 13.50 %.
Chakrabarty further informed that the policy package envisages doubling of credit to SMEs by October 30, 2010, but in Haryana, the banks have already achieved the target.