CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) has launched the SME finance facilitation centre in Uttar Pradesh. The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector is of critical importance in reviving growth. While the government has taken several measures to promote MSMEs, access to credit remains a major issue which needs urgent attention. CII said that MSME, which constitute 70% of CII membership, are facing a lot of pain due to rising costs, lower demand and high cost towards accessing credit.

There was a pressing need for setting up a support centre to ensure that MSME are provided with credit at cost effective rates, to meet their demand for working capital as well as for expansion and diversification. Chief guest Nitin Agarwal, Minister of MSME, Government of Uttar Pradesh, inaugurated the session and launched the CII SME Finance Facilitation Centre at Lucknow by releasing its brochure.

The CII SME Finance Facilitation Centre would provide advisory and credit facilitation support to SME. He during his inaugural address stated that the timely and adequate financial support is the need of the hour for SME’s and proper capital management training is a must for these industries which avail loans. He urged the industries to have a good control on proper handling of capital management. He congratulated CII for coming up a very useful and thoughtful initiative for the SME’s across the Country. He categorically mentioned that the new entrepreneurs need more support and handholding.

Rajneesh Dubey, Principal Secretary – MSME, GoUP during his address said that the SME’s have a huge potential to grow and only the growth of SME’s will ensure the overall growth of the Country. He mentioned that the success of an MSME is that they graduate out of it & grow bigger. He appreciated CII starting Finance Facilitation Centre as it is a big milestone and will bridge gap between Banks and SMEs. He also urged the industries to visit the District Industries Centre to gain more knowledge about the schemes available for the SMEs from the centre.

Sachin Agarwal, Co-Chairman – Regional Committee on SMEs, CII Northern Region said that around 1.8 crore youth would get in to the job market from 2016 onwards and to engage with them new industries should come up. He urged the bankers to treat the Start-ups / SMEs and Large industries separately and suggested to them to take more care of the start-ups and SMEs.

The centre will ensure a system based application process being scrutinized by experts and time bound delivery mechanism with a system generated status tracking model. CII has partnered with leading Banks & NBFCs to support MSME in availing of funds towards growing their businesses needs and expected to sign MOU with many more banks in the future.

Source: The Times of India