HYDERABAD: At the one-day conclave on National Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Hub (NSSH) scheme, aimed at the uplift of budding entrepreneurs belonging to the SC and ST communities, most of the participants expressed a single concern before the representatives of the public sector banks: stop asking for a collateral guarantee for loans.Noting that nationalised banks made it mandatory to collect collateral guarantee in the form of fixed assets before releasing loans, they said such insistence reduced their chances of obtaining loans.
The same opinion was echoed by the ministry of MSME which called upon the banks to be liberal to entrepreneurs. “They are not going to flee with the money the bank gives them. The money they ask for is less than a crore of rupees and their uplift is the best way to create more jobs in the country,” said PGS Rao, director (SME). Suresh Kumar, an entrepreneur in solar energy sector, said the central and state government were lackadaisical in providing guidance to entrepreneurs on securing loans.
“For the past four years I have not been able to get a loan from any nationalised bank as I am asked to give collateral security of a fixed asset whose value should be 150 pc of the loan amount. There is a lot of miscommunication between the central and state governments and we are the ultimate victims,” he added.
But bankers said that a correctly-filled loan application was work half done.
Entrepreneurs need to be confident of their business and be in a position to explain the ins and outs of the business they intend to start,” Sarvanand, assistant general manager, Local Head Office, SBI, said.Further, PGS Rao said that the goods or services procured by the central public sector enterprises (CPSE’s) from SC/ST entrepreneurs have remained below one percent in the past three years.