BSS, Rajshahi :
Speakers at a meeting in Rajshahi underscored the need for enhancing investment towards the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector for bolstered economy and freeing the nation from the vicious circle of poverty.
Terming the SME sector as labour-intensive they viewed that successful promotion of the sector could be the effective means of alleviating poverty, generating employment and thereby accelerating economic growth.
The observation came at the fourth board meeting of SME Financing Company Limited, a subsidiary company of Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (RAKUB), held at the RAKUB’s Board Room yesterday.
With Mofazzal Hossain, Managing Director of RAKUB and also chairman of the company governing body, in the chair, board members Niaz Rahman, Dr Nazmul Bari, Nishit Kumar Shaha, Ekramul Haque and member-secretary and company chief executive officer Jahurul Islam attended and took part in the discussion.
SME loan worth more than Taka 29.09 crore was disbursed among 38,015 entrepreneurs in 40 upazilas in Rajshahi, Chapainawabgonj, Natore, Naogaon, Pabna, Sirajgonj, Bogra, Joypurhat and Kurigram districts through the company in last 2013-14 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 to 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 program through intensifying motivational, awareness building and monitoring activities to make the program a total success.
