PUBLIC SECTOR BANKS HAVE ENOUGH CASH: SITHARAMAN

NEW DELHI: Public-sector banks have sufficient liquidity and efforts are being made to ensure that due payments are released to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector by large corporates ahead of Diwali, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.

Besides, if MSMES want any term loans, this will be looked at in the second phase of the government’s outreach programme beginning next week.

After a review meeting with heads of public-sector banks (PSBS) on Monday, Sitharaman told reporters that banks have been asked to provide bill discounting facility to MSMES against payments due from large corporates. According to returns filed by large corporates, as much as ₹40,000 crore is due to the MSME sectors, Sitharaman said.

“Big corporates have reported to the MCA (ministry of corporate affairs) in the regular returns that they owe ₹40,000 crore to the MSMES. The banks agreed that since they suffer the most from shortage of cash during these camps, they will reach out to all these MSMES to do the bill discounting,” finance and banking secretary Rajiv Kumar said.

Sitharaman said the government will have a two pronged approach, in which, data in all disaggregated form is given to the banks and they shall make an attempt to approach every MSME and ask them if they want this bill discounting and report to the Sitharaman by October 22.

As much as ₹81,781 crore, including new term loans of ₹34,342 crore, was disbursed in the first phase of the outreach programme organised by staterun banks across 200 districts during October 1-9.