GUWAHATI, April 12 — Raising concern over low rate of loan recovery from the new generation entrepreneurs in the region, the Chairman-cum-Managing Director (CMD) of the North Eastern Development Finance Corporation, has made a call to the entrepreneurs to honour their commitment to repay loan instalments in time.
Addressing a press conference here yesterday evening the NEDFi CMD, JP Saikia underlined the need for inculcating a sense of professionalism in the first generation entrepreneurs of the region while revealing the Corporation’s plan to train 200 new entrepreneurs in the current year at its own cost before sanctioning projects submitted by them. Sri Saikia informed that the recovery rate from new generation entrepreneurs was registered around 16 per cent against the regional average recovery rate of 68 per cent in the last financial year.
However, he spoke highly about the women entrepreneurs who have shown tremendous sincerity in repaying loan instalments. The average recovery rate as far as women entrepreneurs were concerned was about 95 per cent in the just ended financial year. Meanwhile, the NEDFi has decided to focus on ventures based on local raw materials and local market of the region in the future. The CMD said, “Our experience for the last six years has taught us that industries which have local raw materials and local market make viable business ventures. This year, proactive effort will be made to finance ancillary industries and small projects in the various States of North East in the service sector. The emphasis on micro finance will continue in order to reach far flung corners of the region. In the current financial year, the NEDFi which has been successful in increasing its networth to Rs 220 crore from the initial paid up capital of Rs 100 crore, plans to sanction Rs 65 crore under the general project finance scheme and Rs 2 crore under Micro Finance Scheme.
The NEDFi Chairman said, “The Corporation has realised that to reach the majority segment of population particularly in the hill states big loans are not the solution. So, NEDFi has focused on micro finance to NGOs, self-help groups, entrepreneurs through innovative methods of involving communities in lending. So far, we have to finance a total of 122 NGOs involving 1066 self help groups covering 10955 beneficiaries.
Significantly, around 55 per cent of the beneficiaries are women.” Sri Saikia called upon all the State governments of the region to formulate adequate industrial policies with a focus on creating infrastructure particularly in the power sector to facilitate setting up of new ventures. He also commented that the Government of India should add more incentives to the North East Industrial Policy, 1997 which has lost much of its attraction in the wake of the Centre’s decision to grant similar incentives for setting up ventures in Jammu, Uttaranchal and Kutch region.
Call Centre: The NEDFi CMD yesterday admitted that the Corporation should have made assured itself about availability of basic necessities like uninterrupted connectivity before funding the international call centre at the IT Park here. He said, “We had funded DSS e-Contact call centre with sincere intention of revolutionising the IT sector here. Unfortunately, the call centre failed to take off because of unavailability of uninterrupted connectivity.”
The NEDFi sanctioned about Rs 8 crore for the total Rs 12 crore International Call Centre project. Now the Corporation is trying to rope in parties from Bangalore and Kolkata to take the facility in its IT Park on lease and set up IT and software technology related ventures.
Meanwhile, the DSS e-Contact was also trying to get some permanent clients abroad to resume operation in the call centre which has remained closed since January last, the NEDFi Chairman informed.