Tirupur: The Apparel Export Promotion Council (Aepc) urged the central government to ensure that banks do not declare any stressed loan account of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) as non-performing assets (NPA), as promised.

Recently, the union finance ministry had announced that if MSMEs have failed to repay the loans from banks on time, the loan accounts would not be declared as NPA till March 2020. The banks have been asked to work on recasting debts.

“The ministry further said several MSMEs want one-time settlement of outstanding dues, which should be settled expeditiously by the banks. The central government wants banks to recast MSME loans instead of declaring it as NPA,” said Aepc acting chairman A Sakthivel. “Despite the government’s announcement, the banks are currently announcing NPAs of such accounts, and they are showing lack of interest in recasting the debt. Many industrial units are eligible to run if they are given a re-construction of loans with additional working capital, which can be evaluated and sanctioned on merit basis. Since the export is time-sensitive business, any delay in catering the client will make them to move to other competitive countries. We observed that reduction of powers to branch heads of the nationalised banks causes enormous delays in getting the loans,” he said.

Published On : 15-10-2019

Source : Times of India