"The President has asked us to think of how to raise the amount of smallholder business credits now that the program has helped the people obtain loans without collateral," Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Hatta Rajasa said here on Sunday.
He said more than a half of the target of smallholder business credits for 2011 had been channeled in the first semester of this year.
Since the program was launched in 2007 it had helped around 600,000 small businessmen and nearly 10 of them had become new medium-sized businessmen, he said.
"For this part, I always ask stakeholders to have commitment (to developing small businessmen) because non-bankable businessmen always have the potentials to become large-sized businessmen. So we must develop them by providing them not only with smallholder business credits but also training," he said.
He asked national banks to ease the disbursement of smallholder business credits now that the government had guaranteed small debtors.
"Don`t impede the disbursement of such credits by asking for collateral as the credits do not require collateral. The credits are earmarked for those who have no collateral," he said.
The national banks are required to channel 25 percent of the smallholder business credit ceiling every year, or around Rp5 trillion for business groups in the agricultural sector, micro small and medium business sector, creative business sector, forestry sector and fishermen sector.(*)
(S012/H-NG/O001)
Editor: Ruslan Burhani
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