India’s central bank has provided special training to nearly 11,000 officers at various commercial banks on lending to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), bank officials have revealed.

This training has been provided to officers working at nearly 3,000 bank branches covering all districts in India through more than 2,000 special workshops in the last three years, the officials reportedly said.

These are mostly specialised bank branches catering to the MSME sector where this multi-level training has been provided, covering branch managers, senior officers and even faculty members of staff colleges who can further pass on the training to the bank employees, reported PTI.

The training exercise was executed in consultation with the government, including with the active involvement of the MSME ministry and the RBI’s objective has been to create a conducive environment to help these small entrepreneurs and companies avail easy and faster credit, officials were quoted as saying.

The officers have also reportedly been provided special kits to help their banks extend more credit to MSMEs, while they have also been trained on behaviourial issues to deal with such borrowers with utmost care, they added.

The RBI’s central board was due to meet on Monday where the government nominees and some independent members are expected to take on Governor Urjit Patel and his team on various issues including norms for the MSME credit.

The RBI is, however, of the view that its policies are very much in favour of easier credit to MSMEs and it has always been making efforts to make further relaxations for such borrowers, sources reportedly said.

The main concern of the central bank is about some big corporates misusing the NPA relaxations for ‘ever-greening’ of their loans, they added.