mumbai the silver lining in the credit story is the 32 growth in loans to small businesses in the subrs 10lakh segment in 2017 the sector is getting more credit after a new law postdemonetisation barred cash transactions and introduction of gst forced businesses to formally report all sales with only five million of the total 50 million small businesses in the country availing credit this is likely to be the next big sector for lendersthe first comprehensive report on credit to small businesses in india was released on monday by the small industries development bank of india sidbi and transunion cibil the report which analyses repayment behaviour of all five million small businesses that have availed formal loans shows that micro small and medium enterprises msmes have much lower nonperforming asset npa rates 812 than large 16 or mid corporates 15 specifically msmes with exposure between rs 10 lakh5 crore have among the lowest delinquency ratesthis report has been created to provide data on small industries in a structured form to policymakers and lenders for intervention said mohammed mustafa chairman sidbi there are many states which have a large number of msmes but credit is not available to them policy intervention is required because there are still 45 million msmes without access to credit he added an interesting insight from the report is that as against rs 77000 crore of reported npas there is rs 8000 crore of stressed loans and rs 26000 crore of loans where borrowers have been irregular in their repayments this indicates that the stress in the sector is not fully recognisedthere has been an information asymmetry in this segment within the states and industries quantitative knowledge of what is good and bad is not known to lenders because this kind of data was not hitherto available said satish pillai md ceo tu cibil of the overall lending to commercial credit of over rs 51 lakh crore micro credit loans below rs 1 crore account for only rs 35 lakh crore while sme loans rs 125 crore add up to rs 82 lakh crore within msmes the rs 1050 lakh segment is growing at 171 and the rs 50 lakh1 crore has been growing at 156 according to pillai after gst fourlakh firsttime borrowers took loans between july and december 2017 in the preceding sixmonth only about 3 lakh new borrowers were addedthe message for lenders is very clear growth is happening in msme which is also having the lowest npa so focus there said mustafa according to the report npas are the lowest 888 in the micro sector and highest in the midcorporate to largecorporate segment 1317 construction auto component machinery equipment had lower npa rates while steel and metals gems and jewellery and mining were the most riskythe report recommends that lenders and credit information companies should be provided access to alternate data such as gst employee provident fund organisation epfo and utility bill payment history to get better credit profiles