24 November
IN a bid to boost the Myanmar tourist industry, Myanmar Tour-ism Bank (MTB) will provide SME loans to the small tourism businesses, in cooperation with the Tourism MSME Develop-ment Committee, part of the Union of Myanmar Travel As-sociation (UMTA).
“Large tourism businesses can easily receive loans, as they can provide collateral. But for the small players, they find it difficult to obtain loans because they could not produce collater-al. So, MTB will provide non-col-lateral SME loans to them,” said U Yan Win, chairman of MTB.
“The bank will provide a maximum of Ks 20 million per business. The non-collateral loan period will be two years, with a 13 per cent interest rate per annum for the bank, and three per cent for insurance. For months long loans the small businessmen will need to pay back the principal, together with the interest. The interest rate will be reduced, de-pending on the amount of return of the principal,” said U Andrew Khant, Deputy Managing Direc-tor of MTB.
“MTB is currently provid-ing non-collateral loans to those businessmen, who are members of UMTA. Later on, loans will be provided to SME businessmen from other sectors,” said U Yan Win.
Although businesses do not need collateral, they must apply for the loans, together with the Credit Guarantee Insurance (CGI) from Myanma Insurance, and provide other documents to MTB or UMTA.
MTB is currently located in Yangon, Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw, but to open additional branches in Yangon, Manda-lay, Monywa, Bagan, Taunggyi, Muse, Myawady and Tachilek.
The introduction of non- collateral loan services was launched during a ceremony held at Panda Hotel, Yangon, at-tended by Director-General Daw Aye Aye Win and officials from the Directorate of Industrial Su-pervision and Inspection, under the Ministry of Industry. Also in attendance were officials from MTB and UMTA.—Aye Min Thu
(Translated by Hay Mar)