While credit to medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs) has been seeing double-digit growth, much of it may have benefited MSME players in the services sector rather than those in manufacturing. Bank credit outstanding to MSMEs grew a mere 0.2% year-on-year (y-o-y) to Rs 3.61 lakh crore, as on May 25, shows data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
This suggests there has been little improvement in manufacturing MSMEs’ access to credit from a year ago. On May 26, 2017, bank credit outstanding to manufucturing MSMEs stood at R3.6 lakh crore, 0.1% higher than a year ago.
Credit to MSMEs as a whole grew 9% y-o-y in May 2018, with the growth being driven almost entirely by enterprises in the services sector. Outstanding loans to services MSMEs grew 15% y-o-y to `5.9 lakh crore. Credit growth in this category showed a significant improvement from the previous year, when it had grown by 5% y-o-y.
Last week, credit bureau TransUnion Cibil and the Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) had released a report which stated that for the period March 2017 to March 2018, entities with a credit exposure of under R25 crore saw a credit growth of 15.4%.
Enterprises with a credit exposure of under Rs 10 lakh saw a credit growth of 35%, while those with an exposure between R10 lakh and R50 lakh clocked 21%. Enterprises whose credit exposure ranges between R1 crore and R5 crore saw credit grow by 17% on a y-o-y basis, according to the report, which did not make a distinction between manufacturing and services enterprises.
Also, public-sector banks’ (PSB) market share in credit to MSMEs dropped to 50.4% in March 2018 from 57% in March 2017 and 60.4% in March 2016. “The market share of private banks has grown from 27.5% (March 2017) to 30.3% (March 2018) and for NBFCs, it has grown from 9.1% to 10.9% during the period March 2017 to March 2018,” observed the report, titled MSME Pulse.
