Funding your Small & Medium Business.

Good Rating is important to secure funds.

According to speakers at an interactive session on "SME Knowledge Interchange on Banking & Finance", a good rating from credit rating agencies is important for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for securing funds from the market or financial institutions. This session was presented by State Bank of India (SBI) in association with Business Standard at Visakhapatnam.

SBI Deputy General Manager, Manoj Khattar, said that banks would look at ratings of a company before funding. As ratings reflect the strengths and weaknesses of institutions, SMEs which have good rating would get advances at low interest rates without much delay.

Virendra Goyal, Vice President-Sales, SME Rating Agency, , said that agencies would be giving ratings depending upon the industry's financial strengths, balance sheet and promoters credibility. Not only credit, a good rating by a reputed rating agency would also help SMEs to obtain subsidies.

K. Ramabrahmam, President, Vizag Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the main problem of the SME sector was procuring land at a reasonable price to set up units.

In response, G. Raghuram, Assistant Director of Department of Industries, said that developing industrial clusters would solve the problem of high land costs.

S. Kishore, Development Commissioner of AP Special Economic Zone, said that the State Government had earmarked some space exclusively for SME parks in SEZs.

Ajay Thakur, SME Business Head of BSE Limited, said that 100 SMEs were expected to be listed on BSE's SME platform by 2014. So far, 26 SMEs have been listed.

Chaman Baid, CEO, ACN Infotech, said that banks are not providing funds to small and medium IT and ITES companies. So, listing of SMEs on the stock exchanges will be helpful in getting funds from the market and other financial sources.

Deepak S Madala, President, Visakha Information Technology Association (VITA) and Peter Shneeberger, Executive Director, Samudra Software took part in the day-long programme.