The scheduled banks and non-bank financial institutions disbursed to the rural entrepreneurs only 24.33 per cent of the total SME loans they distributed in the first half of this year.
According to the latest Bangladesh Bank data, the banks and the NBFIs disbursed Tk 10,184.85 crore in loans to the SMEs located in the rural areas from January to June of 2013 under the BB’s small and medium enterprises credit programme. They distributed total Tk 41,848.56 crore under the programme in the period.
BB officials told New Age on Thursday that a number of banks and NBFIs were reluctant to disburse loans to the SMEs located in the rural areas as they were not bound by laws to give certain amount of such loans in the areas.
Due to a lower SME loan disbursement in the rural areas, the cluster-oriented SME industries are not getting adequate loans from the banks and the NBFIs, they added.
The foreign commercial banks operating in the country did not disburse any loan to the rural entrepreneurs under the BB’s programme in the first half of 2013.
The four state-owned commercial banks — Sonali, Janata, Agrani and Rupali — disbursed Tk 498.93 crore, or 20.70 per cent of their total distributed SME loans of Tk 1,903.32 crore in the period.
The BB data showed that the local private commercial banks disbursed Tk 9,398.65 crore, or 26.18 per cent of their total distributed SME loans of Tk 35,893.96 crore.
In the first six months of this year, the 31 NBFIs disbursed SME loans of Tk 50.10 crore, or 5.32 per cent of their total distributed SME loans of Tk 890.16 crore.
The BB data, however, showed that the SME loan disbursement by the banks and the NBFIs in the first six months of this year reached 56.41 per cent of the annual target of Tk 74,186 crore.
A BB official said the central bank did not specify amount of SME loans to be disbursed by banks and NBFIs in the rural and urban areas.
‘So the FCBs and a number of NBFIs have not disbursed any SME loans in the rural areas in the first six months of this year,’ he said.
He, however, said that the FCBs failed to disburse any SME loan in the rural areas as most of them have no branches in the rural areas.
‘If the FCBs desired, they could have disbursed SME
loans through microfinance linkages in the rural areas,’ he said.
Besides, the FCBs and the PCBs do not have adequate manpower to operate the credit programme in the rural areas, he said.
Asked why the SCBs did not disburse adequate SME loans in the rural areas despite having a huge number of branches in the areas, the BB official said the SCBs were not allowed to get any loan under the refinance funds of the BB, Japan International Cooperation Agency and Annual Development Bank.
The SCBs failed to maintain quality as per the requirement of the refinance funds, he said.
He said, ‘The foreign donor agencies’ main objection is the high amount of classified loans held by the SCBs.’
-With New Age input
