A Micro, small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) Loan Mela was held by MSME Development Institute ( MSME DI) Bengaluru in coordination with Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Friday titled “Financial Assistance/Loan, to MSMEs under the Scheme for an effective Business Growth during post Covid”.
Vijay Kumar, Circle Head Bengaluru East PNB, and Gopinath Rao, IEDS, the MSME DI Deputy Director, opened the discussion at the auditorium of MSME DI. Officials from the bank gave a presentation on the bank’s existing SME programmes, and Rao discussed the government of India’s offerings to the sector.
Around 75 small business owners attended the event and engaged with bank executives. Vijay Kumar interacted with each and every one of the attendees.
On the side-lines of the occasion, Vijay Kumar informed TheSmeIndia.com that the bank recently launched a ‘6S Campaign’ including various schemes such as Swagat, Sankalp, Swabhiman, Samruddhi, Sampark, and Shikhar. The goal is to launch a specific awareness campaign to promote the development of financial services in the country, as well as to increase credit growth, boost social security plan penetration, and push for digital banking.
The Bank has created special interest rates under the Sankalp and Swagat programmes to encourage credit offtake in the retail and MSME sectors and have developed specialist teams in certain districts to supply credit to the MSME sector. In addition, the Bank has increased concessions for chosen products across accordance with the “One district, one product” strategy to guarantee that MSMEs in the country have access to affordable credit.
He also added that this was the bank’s third camp in the state of Karnataka this month, adding that the bank is addressing SME owners for loan applications in accordance with Government of India policies and this would continue till December 2022.
According to Santosh Sharma, Punjab National Bank’s AGM, the bank has collected necessary documents from SME owners and would be able to approve the loan in three days if certain criteria are met, and there is no pre-determined limit on loan sanctioning.
MSMEs account for 70% of the bank’s loan book, according to Vijay Kumar, and the bank offers loans with interest rates as low as 6.6 percent. He also expressed concerns about the NPA, but was upbeat about the money returning to the system, noting that the NPA is in the single digits.
The valedictory speech was delivered by Rao.
