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Is the money flowing again?

Tricky times call for strong strategies but the long term prospects are bright for financiers with staying capacity, finds Charu Bahri. Demand for construction equipment finance has been down for the last few years.

ECB proposal for funding local construction equipments

Agency reports suggest that some NBFC-AFCs (asset financing companies) want Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to allow External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) norms for funding domestically manufactured construction equipment. Recently, the central bank allowed NBFC-AFCs to avail ECBs for funding only imported equipments

We aim to increase asset size by 65 per cent over the previous year

Fastest response time, large distribution and collection net?work coupled with high risk appetite and complete geographic, customer and asset classes' inclusion gives as an edge over competition in retail segment financing, says Pratap Paode, Chief Executive Officer, SEFC.

We shall nearly double our net profit and increase asset size by 65% this year

We are certainly one of the largest FTU segment financers in the CE industry and nearly 65 per cent of our book holds FTU and small customers. This originates from our parent company's philosophy of empowering small customers and entrepreneurs, says Pratap Paode, Chief Executive Officer, Shriram Equipment Finance Company.

Waiting for action

The infrastructure segment and sales figures for construction equipment have witnessed a major slowdown in 2012. On a calendar year basis, the market has dipped by 10-15 per cent, primarily on account of slowdown in allocation of new contracts, various statutory clearances on execution side, funds flow, governance and environmental issues in mining segment and real estate slowdown.

Higher dosage needed, Doctor!

The recent reduction of repo and reverse repo rates by 50 basis points each (from 8.5 to 8 per cent) for repo rate and from 7.5 to 7 per cent for reverse repo rate) is seen as a welcome development as this initiative may spark off fresh investments,