PHD Chamber members interact with Finance Minister, raise J&K economic issues

ZT NEWS NETWORK

Srinagar: Senior leadership of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry interacted with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman through a special webinar today. From J&K the meeting was attended by Mushtaq Ahmad Chaya, Baldev Singh Raina, Rahul Sahai and Rakesh Wazir. 

Finance Minister was conveyed  in writing by J&K team that they “appreciate the Government’s sincere efforts to take all required and positive steps to revive the economy”, the Kashmir Chamber said in a statement here today. 

The memorandum submitted by the J&K chamber has raised the following points:

Certain situmulus  efforts have  been made for small businesses but no measure have been announced for above 25 crore exposure. Our businesses in J&K UT have been suffering since 2014 when valley witnessed unprecedented flood that swept out all established  and households.

Then followed by disturbances in 2016 which put all business establishments to grinding halt. Despite these blows our businesses show resilience and started a fresh , as we were trying to put our derailed businesses on track after series of blow, the abrogation of Article 370  struck a  major setback as the govt restrictions for 3 to 4  month drained all hopes to revive our hard hitted businesses. 

RBI also on several occasions came up with rehabilitation package but that too for small businesses  leaving the large businesses in grappling with its calamities.  Even after all this difficulties, we manage to keep our businesses going at minimum capacity utilization and also keeping our debt obligations servicing despite all odds.  But the bad luck it would have been ,  the economic fallout on account  of the Covid 19  pandemic was just like a last nail in the coffin. 

The Hon’ble Minister was apprised that the Government despites all  high promises did nothing for large and big enterprises of J&K who are in continuous lockdown from August-2019, despite being the main driver of J&K  economy,  large contributor of GST and taxes , greater employment generators but we are seeing no support till date. Lakhs of layoffs are at threshold if we are not suitably rehabilitated.  It was stated that we have strong fundamentals to bounce back but we need deeper  one time restructuring to come out of these series of blow that the businesses in the valley witnessed since 2014.

The meaningful revival of Large  borrowers as well as small borrowers is highly required as was promised in previous meeting held  in the month of march. It was further added  that in J&K the bussiness above 25 Crore has not been supported nor allowed to rehabilitate by RBI, while as in J&K the above 25 Crore accounts are not more than 100 that too the maximum exposure to single or a group account does not exceed 250 Crore.  The chamber requests for intervention and timely help and provisioning for deep restructuring of all loan accounts for a period of 15 year, with EMI starting from Aug-2022 considering the overall uncertain business environment of the region as was  assured to us in the meeting, otherwise the economy and bussiness in UT of JK will get  shattered.