The Bank of India, Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and Indian Bank will soon be offering a new scheme under which goldsmiths in the country can avail of loans in the form of gold (valued at Rs 25 lakhs) without any form of collateral.

"After our successful pilot project at Karaikudi village in Tamil Nadu, in which approximately 4 kgs of gold imported by MMTC was distributed among 300 local goldsmiths in the form of loans, we will now look to launch a similar programme in the 8-10 major gold jewellery manufacturing clusters across the country," said BoI officials.

This scheme, called ‘Star Swarnakar Suvidha Scheme’, is part of the efforts undertaken by the finance ministry to include the rural poor within India’s banking and finance sector. The beneficiaries get a six-year term loan with a six-month moratorium, at a competitive interest rate of 9.5 per cent.

Since banks are not authorised to import gold directly, jewellery manufacturers procure gold from MMTC Limited, the largest importer of gold and silver in India handling about 100 metric tonnes of gold annually, under various provisions of the foreign trade policy.

Traders who wish to procure gold from MMTC are required to submit bank guarantees and this new scheme is expected to provide assistance to individual goldsmiths under competitive prices without any commission. "In rural areas wealthy gold traders provide poor goldsmiths with the raw materials to manufacture gold jewellery. In return for their hard work, goldsmiths are only paid labour charges. Under this scheme, goldsmiths can now make jewellery with the gold provided by banks," added bank officials.

Small-town India is where the action is, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will be providing the juice for economic growth in the years ahead. Or so International Business Machines Corp., the world’s largest software solutions and services provider, believes.

Accordingly, joining a whole bunch of other technology MNCs, IBM, or the Big Blue as the company is called, is going about setting up the infrastructure for the company’s small-town play, even as it continues its focus on large companies in the big towns, says Abraham Thomas, vice-president, global mid market business for Asean and South Asian.

"The SME segment is one of the key areas for IBM, wh-ich has launched the Ex-press portfolio of products and solutions for the mid market segment. We are moving to smaller towns, leveraging on the network of 2,500 partners which IBM has in India," Mr Thomas, a Singaporean who had earlier worked as MD of IBM India, said here on Tuesday.

"Smaller towns in India are home to a lot of mid market companies, which are companies with about 1,000 employees, and we are deploying our resources to tap this market opportunity, which is huge," Mr Thomas said. Apparently, the Exp-ress portfolio, which is stated to be platform-agnostic, has been designed to handle a slew of verticals.

Apart from the SME-centric portfolio, he said, IBM is also developing solutions customised for various verticals. "IBM works with 200 Independent Software Vendors in India, who develop solutions that can work seamlessly with IBM’s software. These solutions, wh-ich are industry-specific, are bundled with IBM’s own software," he says.

Mr Thomas said that working with partners gave IBM a strategic advantage, bec-ause sometimes the management of SMEs were intimidated by the company’s size and reach. "The partners, who are trained by IBM, are more familiar with the needs of the local SMEs, while IBM provides the maintenance and support for our products and solutions."