SME Financing Company Limited, a subsidiary company of Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (RAKUB), has disbursed Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) loan worth Taka 25.75 crore aims at promoting the sector in different potential areas of Rajshahi region in last 2018-19 financial year, reports BSS.
The company also recovered loan of Taka 20.22 crore attaining profit of Taka 4.42 crore in the same fiscal. It was revealed in the 23rd meeting of governing council of the company held at Board room of RAKUB Headquarters here yesterday.
Chaired Nazrul Islam, Chairman of the council and the RAKUB, the meeting was attended and addressed, among others, by RAKUB Managing Director Nurul Islam and council members Prof Rustam Ali Ahmed and Sayed Kutub and Chief Executive Officer of the company Foysul Islam.
Nazrul Islam asked the company officials to expedite the SME credit program through intensifying motivational, awareness building and monitoring activities so that the target group of people can derive its total benefits.
Terming the promising SME sector as labour-intensive he viewed that successful promotion of the sector could be the effective means of alleviating poverty, generating employment side by side with accelerating economic growth.
SME promotion is very important for reducing the existing gap between rural and urban areas, he added.
The meeting was told that the SME loan was disbursed among 4,356 entrepreneurs in 43 upazilas of Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj, Natore, Naogaon, Pabna, Sirajgonj, Bogra, Joypurhat and Kurigram districts.
Main objectives of the loans are of creating an intensive investment scope for the agro-based SMEs in the light of the government industrial policy and for supplementing the government’s efforts to attain food security and economic emancipation.
Various business fields especially software, agro-processing and its business, agriculture, plantation, fisheries, poultry, tissue culture, leather goods, health service and diagnostic centres and education services have been selected for investment as small and medium enterprise loans.