Mumbai, Jun 26 (KNN) The Bank of Baroda like several other PSU banks is betting on the SMEs while becoming cautious in lending to the large corporates, its chairman and managing director SS Mundra has said.

“Your bank has a rich set up of 52 SME loans factories (SMELFs), which sanctioned loans to the tune of Rs 17,230 crore during the financial year under review,” he told shareholders of the bank.

In order to deliberate on the issue facing the MSME sector, BoB organised a MSME conclave with heads of its SMELFs and arranged MSME roundtable conferences at various places, according to him.

“…the bank introduced MSME Capex Loan and Capex Card during financial year 2014 to take care of this sector’s specific requirements. To further promote its MSME business, the bank celebrated MSME festival from November 2013 to February 28, 2014,” he stated.

In addition, to support the MSME sector, the rate of interest on MSME loans was rationalised in June 2013 to make such loans more attractive and competitive.

Mundra said the bank also provided the note counting machine to almost all its branches and strengthened the structure of its retail and SMELFs to mobilise business with quality.

MSME segment is a key source of economic growth and employment in India. Even during these challenging times, this sector’s contribution to the GDP has been quite significant, added Mundra.

Bank of Baroda innovatively gave a retail leaning to its overall business and placed a special focus on retail, MSME and agriculture sectors. With this, the bank managed to grow its credit book by 21 per cent on year on year basis. It posted a growth of 21 per cent in its SME segment. (KNN/ST)