RAKUB disburses Tk 304.5m SME loans in N-region

RAJSHAHI, Apr 30 (BSS): The Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank (RAKUB) has disbursed Tk 304.50 million among the small and medium entrepreneurs during the first nine months of the current 2010-2011 fiscal aimed at strengthening the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector in the northwest Bangladesh. The bank has been implementing the specialised loan programme for bolstering the economic activities in the region through revitalising the income-generating sector. Officials concerned said the RAKUB has adopted the programme for poverty alleviation and creation of more jobs through establishing the small and medium enterprises for economic growth. The main target of the programme is to create 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. Under the credit programme, the RAKUB has established an easy process for extending necessary credits to small and medium entrepreneurs so that they can contribute a lot to the economic growth side by side with making the region free of poverty. In addition to generating new more talented entrepreneurs, the scheme has been creating more women entrepreneurs through providing them with special facilities so that they could be brought to mainstream of the national economic development activities. Headquartered in Rajshahi, the RAKUB, in addition to crop loans, has been providing credits for the small and medium agro-based industries through its 365 branches in all the 16 districts in the region since its inception in 1987. It has achieved a significant success in making the region surplus with food through quality consumer services. 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. The programme has a provision for sanctioning loan up to Tk 50 million in different potential and prospective fields. RAKUB Managing Director Pradip Kumar Dutta told the news agency that the programme had been providing easy credit facilities for the small and medium entrepreneurs as a vital force for poverty alleviation and national economic growth as cherished by the present government. Apart from this, he said the scheme creates job opportunities together with increasing the flow of loan disbursement and recovery through relationship banking that would assist flourishing talents as the substitute of venture capital in the northern region. He said more than Tk 500 million has been earmarked for disbursement for the sector in the current fiscal. Mr Dutta added that the bank launched necessary training for the field level bankers to expedite the lending process according to the requirement of the clients.