DIGC's webinar lends clarity to RBI, FM schemes for Covid relief

This was the first time DIGC ventured out of its tried and tested model of corporate/classroom training into the digital space, according to a press note shared with PrintWeek. The webinar was hosted by CA Uday Dhote, director at DOT Institute of Graphic Communication and past chairman – finance and taxation, AIFMP.

The government recently introduced a slew of measures through various schemes, especially for MSMEs, to bring the economy back on track and kickstart the revival of industries affected by the global coronavirus pandemic, the note mentioned. Though these schemes were announced, there is a lot of confusion in its applicability.

Dhote told PrintWeek, "DIGC decided to conduct the webinar on the topic, so that businesses within the print fraternity are able to take benefit from these schemes and there is a united front presented by the print fraternity to the financial institutions when availing the benefits."

The webinar sought to provide detailed explanation on the schemes and the guidelines, eligibility of the businesses, methods of approaching the banks and other financial institutions for consideration under the schemes.

A welcome kit was shared with the participants before the webinar featuring all the notifications and circulars by the government for them to be better prepared to understand the topic and connect with the same in the webinar along with sharing of templates of letters to be written to the financial institutions.

The webinar saw participation from business owners including luminaries from the finance sector such as Vinod Jain. The webinar opened with the necessary requirements to be considered post restarting and challenges in liquidity generation.

A very pertinent question was the dilemma of saving lives and livelihood. It also touched upon the approach to survival through three levels progression of liquidity, profitability, growth and the key stakeholders involved in it.

One of the key topics discussed during the webinar was on the package declared by the finance minister on pre-approved loans.

Dhote said: "The FM package is in the form of guarantees to banks on loans. But Banks have to first assess the borrower, then lend to him and the guarantee will only kick in once the borrower defaults. No one knows how it will operate in practice. Hence, banks who are already suffering from such large bad debts and defaults, will be very reluctant to lend to MSMEs.

He further said that it would've been better to directly transfer money to MSMEs to pay for raw materials and salaries. "This would have been a fiscal rather than monetary stimulus. This is what most other countries have done."

Dhote also shed light on some important banking concepts like repo rate versus lending rate and the relation between change in the RBI repo rate on the commercial lending rate and other pertinent points such as classification of MSMEs and others.

Building upon the same, he then elaborated upon each notification, circular and scheme with particular emphasis on how to avail it. Later during the webinar, a Q&A session was also conducted in order to shed more clarity on the subjects.

The informative webinar was commended by some of the top players in the industry. For Jain, the webinar had a "brief and superb presentation" covering all necessary points.

Tirthraj Joshi, secretary, Poona Press Owners' Association said, "Overall, it was a good experience. References such as drafting a letter drafting was very useful." Joshi was so impressed that he requested DIGC to conduct the same session in regional languages, too, in order to pass on the information to more people in the industry.

Mehul Desai of MOS said the webinar was “very good and informative”. Meanwhile, Mehul Shah of Encube Ethicals also commended the efforts put in by the DIGC team.