Credit for women entrepreneurs  

Development of entrepreneurship among women is not easy. The process is arduous and in a less women-friendly social environment, it is even more challenging. Happily, some highly educated women of patrician class and also a few of their kinds from the plebeian class played a pioneering role in the late 80's and early 90's to overcome the taboo of women's non-participation in any entrepreneurial venture. While the privileged class delegated responsibilities to women members of their families with the expansion of business and industries, down the rank there was no such luck but thank to a few non-government organisations women enterprises took shape at the grass-roots level too. Dolls and handicrafts made primarily from jute, cotton and cloth led the items for export to foreign countries. Gradually such items saw diversification with women's forays into small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Now a report carried in this newspaper on its Sunday issue claims that women entrepreneurs fail to have access to the special SME credit from banks and non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) the way they deserve. Their share is a paltry 3.37 per cent to the tune of only Tk 52.65 billion of the total Tk 1.56 trillion SME loan disbursed last year. What stands in their way is their unfamiliarity with the formal procedures and the complexity involved with the entire process. More depressing is the fact that women entrepreneurs are taking a back seat in obtaining formal credit at a time when the overall SME financing is going up steadily. This does not augur well for development of women entrepreneurship. It is not clear if NGOs have parted with such entrepreneurship. If women find it difficult to produce relevant documents or necessary papers, a system should be developed to help them out of the dire situation.

Earlier reports confirmed that women entrepreneurs are better at paying their interests on loans or instalments than their male counterparts. In terms of credit-worthiness, therefore, they deserve to be sanctioned loans on a priority basis. But the procedural hindrances have left them neglected. If women of small and medium enterprises are at fault, it is their level of education that does not always prove equal to the task. Also the lack of their entitlement to land and immoveable property is a reason for not producing some documents and qualifying for loans. There is a need for case studies of women entrepreneurs in order to detect the common problems facing them.

This done, there should be a serious and sincere attempt to address those in a systematic manner. Formation of a consulting team/teams by the government or in collaboration with banks and non-banking financial institutions can be considered. The task of the team/teams would be to collect information from women entrepreneurs and advise them how to get their application for loans ready. The team may even go for an on-the-spot visit to see for itself if the enterprises have financial prospect and are credit-worthy. When the answer is positive, it will do everything in favour of the enterprises so much so that those get loans.