"National SME Excellence Award" for small scale sector

Chennai, Jun 20 (UNI) Public Sector Corporation Bank today announced the institution of a "National SME Excellence Award" to honour five outstanding Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (SME) in the country.

Talking to newspersons here, Bank Chairman and Managing Director B Sambamurthy said apart from giving credit and providing other services to the SME sector, the bank has come up with the awards this year to encourage the entrepreneurs.

It would focus on performance in five areas-Food and Agro based processing sector, Auto components sector, Drugs and Pharmaceuticals, Textile and Apparels Sector and others for selecting best SMEs for the awards, he said.

The selection of the short listed SMEs would be done by a special committee constituted for the purpose. The assessment would be on triple bottom line concept and weightage would be given for the performance of the units in relation to economic, environmental and ethical dimensions, he said.

Mr Sambamurthy said the bank's exposure to SMEs as on March 31, 2006 was Rs 2,609 crore and the bank has taken various initiatives to step up the flow of credit to SME and reach the targeted growth of 20 per cent every year.

Mr M S Moodithaya, Director of the Justice K S Hegde Institute of Management, a unit of NITTE Education Trust, which would select the best SMEs for the award, said July 15 would be the last date for receipt of applications and the awards would be announced in September.

About 5000 applications from five categories of SMEs were expected to be recieved for the awards. The economic performance of the SMEs would be given the highest 60 per cent of marks while selecting them for the recognition, he added.

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