ICICI Bank to automate UP industry interface

Virendra Singh Rawat

Lucknow / Mar 18, 2021

Private sector lender ICICI Bank has been roped in to digitise and automate the industry and investment interface of the Uttar Pradesh government.

This comes in the backdrop of the UP government targetting to increase exports to the tune of Rs 3 trillion annually by 2023-24 up from Rs 1.20 trillion in 2019-20 financial year.

On Tuesday, ICICI Bank has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the UP micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) department to digitalise and interconnect the district industry centres (DIC), which are the district level nodes for facilitating investments and setting up industries in the state.

The Bank will interlink all the DIC modules with the state headquarters for speedier approvals and flow of information. The ICICI Bank will provide a propriety enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to the state government.

“The tie-up is expected to not only facilitate investors and entrepreneurs in the state, but lead to an uptick in the credit offtake,” UP MSME and export promotion minister Sidharth Nath Singh said on the occasion.

He informed the state had facilitated net credit flow of nearly Rs 2.5 trillion to about 5 million MSME units over the past four years of the Yogi Adityanath government, which generated almost 25 million job opportunities.

“In the economic sphere, no scheme can be successful without the intervention of banking and technology. The onboarding of the ICICI Bank will increase our efficiency and provide direct benefit to small entrepreneurs,” Singh noted.

UP’s export basket consists of electrical and electronics goods, apparels, footwear, machinery, carpets etc, while the major export destinations include the United States (US), United Arab of Emirates (UAE), Vietnam, Germany, Russia etc.

He added the flagship one district one product (ODOP) scheme of the UP government had created a benchmark in India and peer states were now looking to replicate it to promote their respective indigenous and traditional industries and handicrafts.

Even during the current financial year, which was largely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, the state government had anchored credit flow of more than Rs 43,000 crore to 1.32 million MSMEs, UP additional chief secretary, MSME and export promotion, Navneet Sehgal informed.