India

The small- and medium-size enterprise (SME) sector has been regarded as typically `high risk and high delinquency' in banking circles.

With top corporates demanding low rates on loans and margins nowadays being wafer-thin, new generation UTI Bank is planning to diversify its business.

Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) has reduced its interest rates and margins on advances to small-scale industries (SSI) sector. The new rates will be effective from 1 July.

Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Ltd is planning to get into the credit insurance business, an area dominated by the Export Credit Guarantee Corporation.

Ashok Leyland Finance has raised Rs 1 billion by securitising some of its receivables from hire-purchase schemes and loans for financing cars, trucks, buses, multi-purpose utility vehicles and construction equipment, merchant bankers said today.

Indian small industry has to reposition itself to achieve compatibility with the international trade scenario and become globally competitive, according to a snap poll conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Bharat Overseas Bank Ltd has lowered interest rates on credit to agriculture and small-scale sectors (SSIs).

Speaking at a workshop on 'New Export-Import Policy', the director-general of Foreign Trade, Mr Labanyendu Mansingh, said the list of 10 industrial clusters identified for development, as promised in the new Exim Policy for 2002-07, would be ready

The Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Small Industries (CGTSI), set up by the Government of India and the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), has called for innovative financing tools to pep up inflows of finance into the small-scale

Small-scale units can now get a composite bank loan of up to Rs 50 lakh as against a maximum of Rs 25 lakh earlier.