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SME refinancing trebles

High interest rate poses an obstacle to BB scheme benefit

Sajjadur Rahman
Loans under the Bangladesh Bank's SME refinance scheme have increased more than threefold to about Tk 100 crore in the April-June quarter from the previous quarter, according to the central bank officials.
Some Tk 28.25 crore loans were disbursed in the January March period.
"We have disbursed against almost all applications. This time we did not want to hang on the claims of the financial institutions," a senior BB official said yesterday.
As part of the government moves, the central bank in 2004 introduced a refinance scheme (revolving) with Tk 100 crore to increase small and medium enterprises' access to bank finance at lower rate.
Later, the fund was increased to Tk 300 crore in fiscal year (FY) 2007-08 and Tk 500 crore for FY2008-09.
The BB has SME refinance agreements with 16 banks and 22 non-bank financial institutes. These banks and non-bank financial institutions lend the SMEs and receive refinancing from the BB on a quarterly basis.
Of the institutions, Eastern Bank, Dhaka Bank, Mercantile Bank and One Bank disbursed the highest amount of SME loan last quarter.
According to BB officials, Eastern Bank received the highest Tk 21.5 crore from the
BB for financing the SME sector.
Among the non-banks, IDLC, MIDAS and United Leasing were the leaders in SME credit financing.
Meanwhile, a section of BB officials complained that some financial institutions charge the SME loanees their usual rates without considering the fact that the BB is refinancing
the amount, which is contrary to the government and BB's desire that SMEs get easy access to bank finance relatively at a lower rate.
"Although BB takes only 5 percent interest rate from the banks and non-bank financial institutes, they charge as much as 20 percent interest rates for the loans," another BB official said. It is also learnt that no bank takes less than 13 percent interest for the loans.
The BB has fixed 10 percent interest rate for two other similar schemes - housing and women entrepreneurs but it has failed to do so with the SME scheme.
Banks are cashing in on the situation and imposing charges as much as they can due to absence of any BB directive in this regard, the central bank official also pointed out.
"We have found in our monitoring that banks charge highest 20 percent and lowest 13 percent interest rates for the loans under the SME refinance scheme,” he said.
Initially, the BB imposed 4 percent interest rates, which was raised to 6 percent. But the financial institutes had shown reluctance in going ahead with the scheme. Later the BB was compelled to withdraw the directive on interest rate in May 2004 and allowed financial institutes to fix a rate in accordance with their business policies.
sajjad@thedailystar net