Support to rural cottage industries
Photo: Jashim Salam / driknews
Rural cottage based handloom weaving, potteries, iron-mongering and such other cottage handicrafts from the villages need encouragement and necessary financial support to grow. For them, going to normal commercial banks for financing their working capital, is fairly complicated. It is usually beyond their capabilities to provide the needed guarantees and other documents needed for processing the loan. Further, the usual interests on loans charged by commercial banks are beyond their limited home based output. This is where Grameen Bank can expand their activities further along with many NGOs who may not be able to provide the necessary working capital needed. This can find a way to grow our exports of non-traditional items. It is an area where a nationally committed drive encouraged and supported by the government will be a most welcome move in the right direction. It will help these village cottage industries to flourish, and provide rural employment opportunities. Very often we see reports in the dailies of village products being stifled at source without the important marketing support needed for creating demand and outlets for these traditional rural enterprises that lack the capabilities to develop the needed downstream market potentials on their own. This is an area of promise for the private-public joint effort to encourage and support rural production potential to find and develop the marketing chain for our urban and potential overseas export markets. This can overcome the bottlenecks and related shortfalls, which need to be pragmatically addressed to help develop, encourage and grow our rural economic activities!
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