Virendra Singh Rawat
Lucknow / Dec 2, 2021
Union Bank, India’s fifth largest public sector lender, will lend working capital of Rs 5,000 crore to the pandemic-hit Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector.
The Bank will proactively reach out to the existing and new MSME customers for offering business loans at attractive rates, Union Bank chief general manager (CGM), Central Office, Abhijit Basak told the media here on Wednesday.
“MSME accounts for a significant share of the domestic business landscape and is the largest employment generator in the country. The pandemic had a major impact on the sector,” he said adding the Bank was targetting to lend Rs 5,000 crore pan India under its ‘MSME Festive Bonanza Scheme’, which would continue till December 31, 2021.
He said the lender is offering differential interest rate on business loans ranging from 6.8 percent to 7.4 percent depending upon the collateral and credit rating. Currently, Union Bank has an exposure of nearly Rs 1.20 trillion to the domestic MSME sector.
“Moreover, to help the MSME sector weather the pandemic challenges, we have restructured a large number of loans, since there was also an advisory by the Centre and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to this end,” Basak informed.
Post-Covid, he claimed, the MSME sector has now started to take baby steps towards recovery, which was reflected in lower non-performing assets (NPA) figures compared to the lockdown period.