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SME Foundation plans to extend credit wholesaline

Star Business Report
The Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Foundation plans to expand its credit-wholesaling programme soon, said its managing director and CEO yesterday.
“We are planning to expand the credit wholesaling programme -- especially for women entrepreneurs to support them in capital sourcing," said Dr Momtaz Uddin Ahmed.
“The programme was initiated last year with disbursing collateral-free loans at an interest rate of 9 percent, the lowest in the country, to help promote small and medium entrepreneurs,"he added.
Ahmed was speaking at a
workshop titled "Encouraging Women Entrepreneurs: Access to Finance, Inclination to Borrow and Compliance of Credit" organised by Mutual Trust Bank at the SME Foundation auditorium in Dhaka.
Under the pilot programme, the foundation has disbursed Tk 2 crore to Midas Financing Limited and Shakti Foundation in 2008.
“We want to disburse these loans for the manufacturing sector only, instead of the trading sector. We would like to encourage the manufacturing sector to develop the country's status as an industry-based economy,7 Ahmed said.
“The government sincerely wants to support the
country's small and medium entrepreneurs. We are constantly working to disburse loans to them at a low interest rate,” he said. "A lowered rate of interest will not only help the country's SME entrepreneurs but also the national economy."
In 2004, the government received a grant worth S50 million from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to support the SME sector. Of the total grant, $30 million has been sanctioned as SME loans and $5 million spent on entrepreneur training programmes.
Bangladesh Bank has sanctioned 78 percent of the Tk500 crore small enterprise fund among the SME entrepreneurs, at a 10 percent rate ofinterest
Anis A Khan, CEO and managing director of Mutual Trust Bank, said his bank is working on to increase support to the SME entrepreneurs and especially to the women.
"At present, we have SME service centres and we are trying hard to increase the number," he said. Mutual Trust Bank has disbursed Tk 61 crore to the SME entrepreneurs in the last two years.
Mohammad Iqbal, senior vice president of Mutual Trust Bank, and Ahmed Ali Shah, deputy general manager of SME Foundation, were also present.
SME Foundation was established in 2007 with an endowment of Tk 205 crore from the central bank.