Sudatta Mandal, Deputy Managing Director, SIDBI, inaugurated a new branch of Small Industries Development Bank of India located at, Plot No.41, (Ground floor), near BDSSIA Material testing laboratory, Khanapur Road, Udyambag, Belagavi to cater to the MSME’s growing financial requirements.
In his opening remarks, DMD SIDBI mentioned at Belagavi that MSMEs are a vital part of the Indian economy and have made significant contributions to the country’s socio-economic growth. MSMEs make a crucial contribution to India’s GDP, are the second-largest employment provider, and have a significant contribution to the overall exports of the country. Considering this, he reiterated the need for providing ‘timely and adequate credit’ to MSMEs by banks/Fls. He mentioned that issues like delayed payment, collateral, etc. need to be addressed more holistically so that the MSMEs being the backbone of the country are benefit.
He mentioned that SIDBI has been set up as the Principal Financial Institution for the Promotion, Financing and Development of MSMEs in the country. SIDBI has been playing a catalytic role in creating vibrancy in the MSME ecosystem and has carved a very crucial role for itself in India’s industrial economy. He mentioned that SIDBI was predominantly doing indirect finance as mandated and, it reached out to the MSMEs through Banks, NBFCs, MFI etc., and has now felt that the financial needs of MSMEs are dynamic and need to be met in a timely and cost-effective manner.
With this background, SIDBI started direct finance which is around 10% of total credit to MSMEs. However, the 10% of the credit has its relevance and needs to be increased to 20% and further. He further informed that, today, SIDBI is fully digitized and caters to the MSME’s varied needs with its innovative products. SIDBI is now expanding and opening branches in industrial clusters and has more than 90 branches and is expected to cross over 100 shortly.
SIDBI has been at the forefront of providing innovative solutions to the issues faced by/requirements of MSMEs. It has created a green and digital credit delivery system for extending credit promptly to MSMEs at competitive terms and has also set up TReDS exchange platform in a joint venture with NSE for addressing the issue of late receivables. He also mentioned that SIDBI has fully digitized its lending processes, which enables extending financial assistance in 48 hours.
SIDBI has recently launched a fully automated Straight Through Process to sanction loans up to Rs. 100 lakh online within a couple of hours. DMD, informed that SIDBI has introduced policies for providing timely financial assistance and liquidity to MSMEs.