Finance Minister advises public sector banks to focus on MSME outreach

New Delhi, June 10 (KNN) Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has advised Public Sector Banks (PSBs) to maintain proactive outreach to the Micro, Small and Medium enterprises (MSMEs) and ensure supply of credit to them.

Sitharaman, on Tuesday, held a review meeting on credit guarantee scheme with heads of PSBs and also asked them to expedite loan disbursement under the Rs 3-lakh crore Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) for MSME sector.

Taking to the micro-blogging site twitter, the Department of Financial Services said that Sitharaman asked banks to cut down on paperwork and keep the formalities simple for the sector.

''FM’s review of PSBs: Hon’ble FM @nsitharaman Ji complimented PSBs on rapid traction for achieving sanctions of Rs. 20000 Cr under ECLGS. Also advised to maintain proactive outreach at branch level and keep Forms for ECLGS simple & formalities at minimum,'' DFS tweeted.

In another tweet DFS said that Banks will continue to focus on sanction of loans and reach out to eligible MSMEs. It will also “target meeting credit needs of other businesses”.

As of June 8, loans worth Rs 599.12 crore has been disbursed by the public sector banks to 17,904 MSMEs under Rs 3 lakh crore collateral-free Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS), Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s office said in a tweet on Tuesday.

These MSMEs are based across 21 cities or MSME hubs in 12 states.

The overall amount sanctioned till Monday stood at Rs 1,109 crore for 26,916 accounts across these hubs.

Tamil Nadu has so far topped in terms of disbursement to MSMEs. In Tamil Nadu, disbursements as per districts were Coimbatore (Rs 143.7 crore in 1,758 accounts) and Tiruppur (Rs 97.2 crore in 760 accounts) followed Durgapur (Rs 61.4 crore in 2,005 accounts) in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur (Rs 60.5 crore in 1,498 accounts), and Gujarat’s Surat (Rs 39.7 crore in 992 accounts) and Rajkot (Rs 33.8 crore in 981 accounts).

Other states included Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhatisgarh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Telangana, and Karnataka. The data was shared by Sitharaman in the tweet.

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a Rs 20 lakh crore economic package last month.