Srinagar, 17 June (KNS): The senior leadership of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Friday interacted with Hon'ble Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitaraman through webinar. The meeting was attended by Mr Baldev Singh Raina, Mr Mushtaq Ahmad Chaya, Mr Rahul Sahai and Mr Rakesh Wazir from J&K.
The Hon'ble Minister was conveyed in writing by J&K team that “we appreciate the Government’s sincere efforts to take all required and positive steps to revive the economy. Certain stimulus efforts have been made for small businesses but no measure have been announced for above 25 crore exposure. Our businesses in J&K UT have been suffering since 2014, when valley witnessed unprecedented flood that swept out all established and households. They further said that “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 govt restrictions for 3 to 4 month drained all hopes to revive our hard hitted businesses. RBI also 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 COVID19 pandemic was just like a last nail in the coffin”.
The Hon'ble Minister was apprised that the Government despite all high promises did nothing for large and big enterprises of J&K who are in continuous lockdown since 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 onetime restructuring to come out of these series of blow that the businesses in the valley witnessed since 2014.
The meaningful revival of large borrowers is highly required as was promised in previous meeting held in the month of March. It was further added that in J&K the businesses above 25 crore have not been supported nor allowed to rehabilitate by RBI, while as in J&K the above 25 crore accounts are not more than 100 that too the maximum exposure to single or a group account does not exceed 250 crore. The chamber requests for intervention and timely help and provisioning for deep restructuring of all loan accounts for a period of 15 year, with EMI starting from Aug-2022 considering the overall uncertain business environment of the region as was assured to us in the meeting, otherwise the economy and business in UT of JK will get shattered.