The small & medium enterprise (SME) sector is not getting the benefits of the schemes announced by the central government as entrepreneurs as well as banks are not aware of them.
“The government comes up with schemes for technology upgradation, marketing, export promotion, etc for the sector, but there are not enough takers,” said KS Singhwan, general manager (eastern zone) of Sidbi. He was speaking at a CII seminar on empowering Indian SMEs in the globalisation era here late on Wednesday.
According to Singhwan, the Centre has been fixing disbursement targets of Rs 100-1,000 crore for periods ranging from three to five years. However, the entire amount mostly remains untouched because of lack of awareness about the schemes.
“Entrepreneurs don’t know about the schemes and bank officials at the ground level don’t know what schemes to suggest to their customers,” said Singhwan, adding that suggesting schemes laden with incentives to SMEs would only help banks strengthen their own portfolios.
Partha Sengupta, vice-chairman, CII’s Jharkhand chapter, said the SME sector, which has high employability, needed to transform itself in order “to synchronise with the global economy and match it in terms of technical skills, delivery standards, etc in a sustained manner”.
Later, speaking to FE, the Sidbi general manager said the SME Rating Agency of India (Smera) was currently reviewing its 2006 study on the 300-odd auto engineering & fabrication units located in the Adityapur industrial area.
The exercise would help the banking sector, including Sidbi, to take an ‘informed decision’ on the credit requirement of different units.
Sidbi, which has three offices in Jharkhand, has a portfolio of around Rs 45 crore by way of direct lending to the SME sector.
According to AK Pandey, assistant general manager of Sidbi, fresh disbursements to the tune of Rs 25-30 crore during the current year as well as repayments received from the units would see Sidbi’s portfolio to go up to Rs 55 crore during 2007-08.