PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry has urged Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman to intervene by providing timely help and provisioning for deep restructuring of all loan accounts for a period of 15 year with EMI starting from August 2022 in view of overall uncertain business environment in the region.
This sentiment and various issues were echoed by the senior leadership of PHDCCI while interacting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman through webinar which was attended by Baldev Singh Raina, Mushtaq Ahmad Chaya, Rahul Sahai and Rakesh Wazir.
According to statement, PHDCCI informed the finance minister that meaningful revival of large borrowers as well as small borrowers is highly required as was promised in previous meeting held in the month of March.
“In J&K, the business above Rs 25 crore has not been supported nor allowed to rehabilitate by RBI, while as in J&K the above Rs 25 crore accounts are not more than 100 that too the maximum exposure to single or a group account does not exceed Rs 250 crore,” they said.
The statement said that the finance minister was conveyed in writing by J&K team that “we appreciate the Governments sincere efforts to take all required and positive steps to revive the economy.”
“Certain situmulus efforts have been made for small businesses but no measure have been announced for above Rs 25 crore exposure.
“Our businesses in J&K UT have been suffering since 2014 when Kashmir witnessed unprecedented flood that swept out all established and households. Then followed by disturbances in 2016 which put all business establishments to grinding halt. Despite these blows our businesses show resilience and started a fresh, as we were trying to put our derailed businesses on track after series of blow, the abrogation of Article 370 struck a major setback as the government restrictions for 3 to 4 month drained all hopes to revive our hard-hit businesses.”
“RBI on several occasions came up with rehabilitation package but that too for small businesses leaving the large businesses in grappling with its calamities. Even after all this difficulties, we manage to keep our businesses going at minimum capacity utilization and also keeping our debt obligations servicing despite all odds.”
“But the bad luck it would have been, the economic fallout on account of the Covid 19 pandemic was just like a last nail in the coffin.”
“She was apprised that the Government despites all promises did nothing for large and big enterprises of J&K who are in continuous lockdown from August-2019, despite being the main driver of J&K economy, large contributor of GST and taxes, greater employment generators but we are seeing no support till date.”
“Lakhs of layoffs are at threshold if we are not suitably rehabilitated. It was stated that we have strong fundamentals to bounce back but we need deeper one-time restructuring to come out of these series of blow that the businesses in the valley witnessed since 2014,” said the PHDCCI leadership.