Panel pushes for more women entrepreneurs

The Committee on Empowerment of Women in its report has asked Ministry of Finance to conceptualise specific gender sensitive training modules for the branch managers and officers in public sector banks and the performance evaluation criteria for them would necessarily include their efforts in providing credit to women entrepreneurs.

“The committee also desires that the Ministry may apprise them in three months time about the gender sensitive training programmes conducted by various banks and also about the gender component included in the performance evaluation reports of bank officials,” the report said. It had also recommended that a separate desk for SC/ST and Self Help Groups should be set up in all the banks functioning in areas which have higher concentration of SC/ST population, especially for the purpose of extending credit to women from these groups.

Though 6.12 per cent of net bank credit was found to have been extended to women borrowers, the Committee did not feel that the figure reflects the real picture of credit disbursement in the different states in the country.
They, therefore, recommended that a study should be conducted for each state to figure out the status of credit opportunities for women.

In view of the current market conditions, the Committee in their report had recommended that the exemption limit of secondary collateral security for loans up to Rs 50,000 for individuals and Rs Five Lakh for groups under Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana should be enhanced to Rs One Lakh and Rs 10 Lakh respectively for women.
“The Committee desires that the Ministry should ensure that the benefit of enhanced loan is reaching women entrepreneurs at liberalised terms.
DH News Service