SME Financing Company Limited, a subsidiary company of Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (RAKUB), has disbursed Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) loan worth Taka 29.12 crore aims at promoting the sector in different potential areas of this region during the first six months of the current 2019-2020 fiscal till December last.
The company also recovered loan of Taka 26.11 crore attaining profit of Taka 1.09 crore during the same period. It was revealed in the 27th meeting of the governing council of the company held at Board room of RAKUB Headquarters at Rajshahi on Wednesday.
Nazrul Islam, Chairman of the council and the RAKUB presided over the meeting. It was attended and addressed, among others, by RAKUB Managing Director AKM Sajedur Rahman Khan and council members Prof Rustam Ali Ahmed, Muhammad Idrish, Towhida Khatun and Chief Executive Officer of the company Abdullah Salah Uddin Gazi.
The meeting was told that the SME loan was disbursed among 2,564 entrepreneurs and recovered from 1987 entrepreneurs in 43 upazilas of Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj, Natore, Naogaon, Pabna, Sirajgonj, Bogra, Joypurhat and Kurigram districts.
The loans were disbursed with the main thrust 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.
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 an 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.
