Senior bankers at a meeting here stressed the need for enhancing investment in the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector for bolstering economy and freeing the nation from the vicious cycle of poverty, reports BSS.
Terming the SME sector as labour-intensive they viewed that successful promotion of the sector could be the driving force of alleviating poverty, generating employment and thereby accelerating economic growth which is very important for reducing the existing gap between rural and urban areas.
The observation came at the 12th board meeting of SME Financing Company Limited, a subsidiary company of Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (RAKUB), held in its board room on Monday afternoon.
With Muhammad Awal Khan, managing director of RAKUB and also chairman of the company governing body, in the chair, board members Firoj Uddin Khalifa, Nazrul Islam, Mozammel Haque and Sazammul Islam and member-secretary and company chief executive officer Fazlul Karim attended and took part in the discussion.
SME loan worth more than Taka 19.70 crore was disbursed among 23,087 entrepreneurs in 40 upazilas in Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj, Natore, Naogaon, Pabna, Sirajganj, Bogra, Joypurhat and Kurigram districts through the company’s lending activities during the last fiscal year, the meeting mentioned. Recovery rate is around 99 percent.
The loans are being disbursed with the main thrust of creating an intensive investment scope for the agro-based SMEs in the light of the government industrial policy and for supplementing the government’s efforts to attain food security and economic emancipation.
In addition to generating new talented entrepreneurs, the loan scheme has provision for creating more women entrepreneurs through providing them with special facilities so that they could be brought under the mainstream of the national economic development activities.
Various business fields especially software, agro-processing and its business, agriculture
plantation, fisheries, poultry, tissue culture, leather goods, health service and diagnostic
centres and education services have been selected for investment as small and medium enterprise
loans.
The discussants said the SME sector can play an effective role in economic progress,
employment generation and poverty reduction. If the SMEs are properly financed, the nation
would be benefited.
SME unit does not require highly sophisticated technology and it could be useful in backward
areas where the people have yet to be trained to meet the challenges of sophisticated
technology, they added.
They asked the company to expedite the SME credit programme through intensifying
motivational, awareness building and monitoring activities to make it a total success.
Terming the SME sector as labour-intensive they viewed that successful promotion of the sector could be the driving force of alleviating poverty, generating employment and thereby accelerating economic growth which is very important for reducing the existing gap between rural and urban areas.
The observation came at the 12th board meeting of SME Financing Company Limited, a subsidiary company of Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (RAKUB), held in its board room on Monday afternoon.
With Muhammad Awal Khan, managing director of RAKUB and also chairman of the company governing body, in the chair, board members Firoj Uddin Khalifa, Nazrul Islam, Mozammel Haque and Sazammul Islam and member-secretary and company chief executive officer Fazlul Karim attended and took part in the discussion.
SME loan worth more than Taka 19.70 crore was disbursed among 23,087 entrepreneurs in 40 upazilas in Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj, Natore, Naogaon, Pabna, Sirajganj, Bogra, Joypurhat and Kurigram districts through the company’s lending activities during the last fiscal year, the meeting mentioned. Recovery rate is around 99 percent.
The loans are being disbursed with the main thrust of creating an intensive investment scope for the agro-based SMEs in the light of the government industrial policy and for supplementing the government’s efforts to attain food security and economic emancipation.
In addition to generating new talented entrepreneurs, the loan scheme has provision for creating more women entrepreneurs through providing them with special facilities so that they could be brought under the mainstream of the national economic development activities.
Various business fields especially software, agro-processing and its business, agriculture
plantation, fisheries, poultry, tissue culture, leather goods, health service and diagnostic
centres and education services have been selected for investment as small and medium enterprise
loans.
The discussants said the SME sector can play an effective role in economic progress,
employment generation and poverty reduction. If the SMEs are properly financed, the nation
would be benefited.
SME unit does not require highly sophisticated technology and it could be useful in backward
areas where the people have yet to be trained to meet the challenges of sophisticated
technology, they added.
They asked the company to expedite the SME credit programme through intensifying
motivational, awareness building and monitoring activities to make it a total success.
