Canara Bank has expanded its network of “SME Sulabh” centres to 7 more cities. The SME Sulabh is a centralised loan processing centre for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) of the bank. It is now available in Agra, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Lucknow, Madurai, Pune and Trivandrum. The “SME Sulabhs” are aimed at fast processing and quick delivery of credit to MSMEs. Such SME Sulabhs are already functioning at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai from April 2009.
SME Sulabh centres are equipped with specialised marketing and credit appraisal teams and shall directly receive process and sanction the credit proposals in a time bound manner. With this approach, the turn around time for MSME credit proposals is expected to come down. The Bank has embarked upon reaching out to large section of MSMEs at major centres in the country through this model.
In addition these centres, Canara Bank already have 38 specialised SME branches across the country for increasing credit flow to MSME sector.
The Bank’s credit to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) recorded a 23.4 per cent growth to reach Rs 23,652 crore as at June 2009 compared to a level of Rs 19,173 crore as of June 2008.