15-20 fiscal schemes offered by bank to MSMEs
PANAJI
The chairman and managing director of Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) Sivasubramanian Ramann, paid a courtesy visit to the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) with Pranav Piyush, AGM, SIDBI. GCCI president, Ralph De Sousa stated in his welcome address that as the apex industry association of Goa, GCCI represented a major chunk of Goa’s industry and that its members were keen to understand and avail the various finance options offered by SIDBI to industry.
Gautam Raj, plant head, MRF and member of Industry Committee of GCCI introduced Ramann. GCCI’s Shambhu Kalangutkar presented a floral bouquet to Ramann. On this occasion, Damodar Kochkar, president, GSIA, Ganesh Shenoy, president, Corlim Industrial Estate, Jayesh Raiker and SandeshDhar Eshwar, members, GCCI Industry Committee, Asha Arondekar of Global to Local, Prasad Sawant, Buoyancy Consultants, Shreemi Panandikar, Silverline World, Blaine Alvares, MARC, Prachi S Bhobe, CAM Industrial Services were present.
Ramann informed that he had joined SIDBI as CMD in the middle of the second wave of Covid. “It was that dark phase which had compelled the banking sector to adapt technology at a furious pace. Creating a repository of authentic data of borrowers makes credit assessments easy and the NeSL – National e-governance Services Ltd. is a perfect example of how technology could be used to harness data of a borrower’s debt exposure and in turn help the financial institution in loan disbursements,” said Ramann. SIDBI has computerized its lending operations and was awaiting Goa government’s approval of the digital stamping system. This would eliminate paperwork and make disbursement efficient. There are 15-20 schemes offered by SIDBI to MSMEs of different sizes.
Raj Kumar Kamat, chairman of GCCI’s Industry Committee stated that SIDBI is an organization which understands industry and requested Ramann to consider taking over other banks’ loans as this would relieve many businesses which are suffering due to unreasonable demands from banks.
Team GCCI expressed their appreciation of SIDBI’s assistance in providing finance and working capital loans. However, they said that this had yet to be translated into EODB for business as there was still a lot of paperwork involved, processes were not streamlined, there was duplicity in information required by numerous departments. Thus, despite lowering of interest rates by RBI, this has not percolated to the business community as banks are not forthcoming in their disbursements. A problem peculiar to the ITES industry was that its principal investment was in its software. Therefore, offering any collateral security to a financial institution to secure loans was nearly impossible.
GCCI chairman Ralph De Sousa agreed and said that the current regulations are based on the brick-and-mortar industry. As assets are minimal in the IT and ITES industry it was difficult to source finance. The women entrepreneurs said that they were looking for micro finance and requested SIDBI’s assistance. Ramann assured to come up with solutions. Yatin Kakodkar, secretary, GCCI managing committee proposed the vote of thanks. Pallavi Arondekar, deputy director, GCCI compered the session.
