mumbai on the surface the oneyearold marriage between the hindi film industry and financial institutions appears to be a success institutional funding of rs 70 crore has been given for 12 projects this year producers of three films have already repaid the money lent to them but there is a hitchthere is only one lender so far industrial development bank of india idbi although reserve bank india rbi gave its nod for institutional funding for films last february recently bank of india announced the setting up of a rs 50crore corpus for film finance financial institutions and banks like unit trust of india sicom sbi icici ifci indusind bank rabo bank punjab national bank bank baroda and canara bank have also shown interest these players have been wary for long because the film industry has been largely unorganised and a risky proposition say observers this sentiment was voiced by idbi chairperson pp vora at the recent frames 2002 convention bank funding would improve if producers were organised as corporates had structured scripts to offer and were more transparent in their accounting practices he said but according to idbi officials the disorganised film industry is slowly putting its house in order corporate jargons like professionalism and organisation are slowly sinking into the industrys psyche their awareness for structured finance is also increasing says bank official sw patwardhan the oneyear association between idbi and the film industry has not been without its share of hiccups for example soon after idbi announced the film finance scheme several producers started demanding funds for their projects forcing the bank to slow down the process a few producers also expected the bank to hand over funds the day after their proposal was approved rajshri production whose three projects have been sanctioned for finance initially refused to give personal guarantee the bank there was also some resistance to documentation required for availing funds says vipul shah director of idbifunded film aakhein which is scheduled for an april 5 release we were expected to do a lot of paperwork this was quite tedious since we are not used to it he further adds that the bank officials visited the sets three to four times to monitor the films progress right now both the parties are slightly wary of each other but things should smooth out over a period of time after we get to know each other better shah reasons several producers also claim that the bank takes enormous time in clearing proposals but as filmmaker subhash ghai an advisory member to the bank explains its better to scrutinise a project thoroughly rather than pick up wrong apples film finance is a risky business the industry does not want this experience to end like the nfdc scheme which was started to finance art cinema in fact we want more banks and financial institutions to come forward to finance movies not that the industry is unaware of the benefits of availing untainted funds besides bringing transparency in