Health sector included in ECLGS scheme

April 17, 2021

The Ministry of Finance recently expanded the scope of Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme to Rs 3 lakh crores. It aims to provide relief to stressed companies in the country. This mainly includes business enterprises in tourism, hospitality, travel and sporting sector.

The National Credit Guarantee Trustee Company is the guarantee provider of the ECLGS Scheme.

Key Highlights

The scheme has been expanded to health care and other stressed sector companies that have loan dues up to sixty days (SMA-1 accounts). The validity of all the three ECLGS, that is, ECLGS 1.0, ECLGS 2.0 and ECLGS 3.0 have been extended till June 2021.

What are SMA accounts?

SMA accounts are Special Mention Accounts. These accounts show signs of incipient stress.

The SMA accounts whose payments are partially or wholly overdue for 1-30 days are called SMA-0 accounts.
The SMA accounts that have payments overdue for 31-60 days are called SMA-1 account.
The SMA accounts that have payment overdue for 61-90 days are SMA-2 account.

ECLGS

The scheme was launched as part of Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan. The main objective of the scheme is to mitigate the distress caused by COVID-19 induced lock down. The scheme mainly aims to ease livelihood of people dependent on MSMEs.

ECLGS 1.0

It provides collateral free and fully guaranteed additional credit to MSMEs, MUDRA borrowers and business enterprises. It provides additional credit to MUDRA borrowers to the extent of 20% of their credit outstanding. Also, it provides additional credit to MSMEs with Rs 25 crores of outstanding. However, only those MSMEs with more than Rs 100 crores of turnover are eligible.

ECLGS 2.0

The Kamath Committee identified twenty-six stressed sectors. The ECLGS scheme was extended to these sectors as ECLGS 2.0. It mainly focused on entities in health care sector with an outstanding credit between Rs 50 crores and Rs 500 crores.