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)