Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, May 12: Aimed to address the credit bottleneck and stimulate regional industrialization, a high-power delegation of the Kashmir Traders and Manufacturers Federation (KTMF), led by Chairman Abrar Khan and president Hilal Mandu, met with the Amitava Chatterjee, MD & CEO of Jammu & Kashmir Bank, here today.
The delegation submits a comprehensive memorandum centered on “Vision 2026.”
This roadmap outlines 14 critical interventions designed to leverage the bank’s strong financial position for the benefit of the MSME and trading communities, most notably proposing a formal partnership for J&K Bank to serve as the Exclusive Finance Partner in a mission to develop 100 MSME entrepreneurs per district.
During the consultations, the Federation raised serious concerns regarding the ground-level implementation of central schemes such as PMMY (Mudra), CGTMSE and PMEGP, demanding a strict end to branch-level requirements for tangible security or government guarantors to ensure these programs remain truly collateral-free.
To further facilitate economic resilience, the Federation advocated for lowering the CIBIL qualification threshold to 625, granting an immediate one-year moratorium for the transport sector due to the BS6 transition and designing flexible One-Time Settlement (OTS) schemes with realistic durations to help “circumstantial defaulters” recover.
The leadership also urged the bank to decentralize decision-making authority back to the branch level to reduce operational delays, expedite recruitment to address staffing shortages in rural areas.
They emphasized that the objective is to ensure the bank’s historic profits translate into historic growth for the local trader and industrialist, aligning the bank’s lending power with a research-driven vision to build a more resilient regional economy.
This initiative is supported by the Jammu Kashmir Economic Research and Development Forum (JKERDF) and academic knowledge partners to ensure all projects are backed by rigorous market research and technical expertise.
The delegation also included chief advisor Dr Tauseef Ahmed, vice president Sufi Mahruddin and general secretary Khalid Baba.
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