Assocham suggests to making small, medium firms more competitive

The rate of interest for SMEs which should have been ideally at 10 per cent, in reality is 15 per cent which is totally unserviceable and hurts productivity of SMEs to the extent of 25 per cent, he said. The Chamber has suggested that there should be only one inspector for examining the records of SMEs in PF, excise, bonus, sales tax etc. and likewise sectoral arrangements should be made in a manner so that one inspector is made incharge of 5 different functions of SMEs. Speaking on the occasion, secretary general Assocham, D S Rawat said that the procedural issues faced in raising loans include lot of paperwork, collateral security, high processing fee and prepayment charges. “Banks are not cooperative in promoting the new projects and even if they do show an interest, the time taken to sanction loans and the risk averse attitude of bank managers is astounding,” said Rawat.