Tamil Nadu: Finance minister told to allocate more funds for micro units

COIMBATORE: Members of the Federation of Coimbatore Industrial Association (Focia) on Wednesday wrote to Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, requesting her to allocate more funds to disburse loans to micro units hit by the pandemic.
“The Union government recently announced a separate scheme for micro units, under which, loans up to Rs 1.25 lakh each could be given to both existing and fresh borrowers. But the government allotted only Rs 2,500 crore, which will not be sufficient even to cover the targeted 25 lakh micro units,” Focia coordinator J James said. “The target would benefit only 4.2% of the micro units in the country. We have requested the minister to increase fund allocation for the scheme.”
A statement from the federation said that the members also requested the minister to take steps to waive penalties levied on bounced EMIs in the last two months during the lockdown. “The recent statement by banks reveals that about 60% of new non-performing assets added during April and May 2021 are from MSMEs and the increase is almost twice the normal occurrence,” the statement added.