`SME Meet’ - By Corporation Bank
Asit Pal, Executive Director, Corporation Bank, speaking at the `SME Meet’ organised by the bank in Coimbatore. Corporation Bank is targeting Rs. 5,000 crore business in Coimbatore Zone in 2009-2010. The bank organised a SME Meet here on Friday. Executive Director of the bank Asit Patel said Coimbatore was a potential centre for the MSME segment. Despite the global economic recession, banks in India were not affected in terms of liquidity and asset quality. In India, the MSME sector had 32 lakh units that make about 2,500 products.Nearly four crore people were employed in the sector. The units were mostly partnership or proprietor type. Nearly 35 per cent of the country’s exports were from this MSME units. At the same time, the domestic demand was also huge. Some of the challenges faced by the units were lack of quality industrial infrastructure, marketing assistance and access to finance. If the units were helped to meet these, the MSME sector would get a boost. The bank had exposures in the textile, engineering, heavy engineering, woollen, gem and jewellery, pharmaceutical, diamond and KVIC segments.
The meeting was organised to elicit the views of the MSME owners so that the bank would be able to assist the sector further. Similar meetings were planned in other centres too, he said. Bank officials told the gathering that the bank had 59 branches in the zone, Rs. 1,234 crore deposit and Rs. 2,213 crore advances. It had one industrial finance branch, two SME branch and an agriculture branch here. The bank had given special thrust to the Small and Medium-scale sector through products such as CorpSME Tex Plus, CorpSME Auto Plus, etc. It had instituted an award – Corp Excel – for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector.
