The commercial banks and the non-bank financial institutions have lowered their target for SME loan disbursement to the woman entrepreneurs by 29.75 per cent for this year compared to that of 2011.
According to Bangladesh Bank data released last week, the banks and the NBFIs disbursed only 16.10 per cent in the last three months of 2012 of their targeted annual loan disbursement to the woman entrepreneurs.
The central bank officials said that the banks and the NBFIs were reluctant to raise the target of loan disbursement to the woman entrepreneurs as many of the banks were not gender sensitive.
A BB official told New Age on Thursday that the central bank had asked the banks and the NBFIs to submit the annual loan disbursement target for SME sector within first month of the calendar year.
They, however, finally submitted their disbursement target on May 8, 2012, he said.
For woman entrepreneurs, the banks and NBFIs in 2012 set a loan disbursement target of Tk 4,015.45 crore in 2012, or 29.75 per cent lower from Tk 5,715.92 crore in 2011, BB data showed.
On the other hand, the banks and the NBFIs
set a loan disbursement target of Tk 59,012.78 crore this year from Tk 56,940.13 crore in 2011 for the SME sector.
Officials said loan disbursement to the female entrepreneurs in the first three months of this year was only 6.80 per cent against the total annual SME disbursement target of Tk 59,012.78 crore.
According to BB data, woman entrepreneurs received only 3.81 per cent of the total SME credit disbursed in 2011 and 3.37 per cent in 2010.
The central bank had earlier decided that the woman entrepreneurs would get 10 per cent of the total annual target of loan disbursement from the SME credit programme.
The central bank had earlier issued a circular to the commercial banks asking them to establish women dedicated desks at all their branches to
help them. But the banks were yet to set up such desks.