CREDIT ACCESS FROM BANKS AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE MSME SECTOR OF THE FOOD PROCESSING INDUSTRY IN KERALA

The Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector is acknowledged often as the economic growth engine for countries since it functions as a central part in offering larger-scale employments opportunities at a lesser cost of capital, whilst developing the rural in addition to backward communities via Industrialization, resulting in much equivalent distribution of the nation's wealth and its income. Regardless of this significance, the sector encounters numerous constraints, namely the scarcity of sufficient and timely contribution of bank finance. The Food Processing (FP) industry in this sector plays an essential part in economic development. In India, Kerala offers lots of raw materials aimed at FP sectors but the sectors comprise financial access issues like this. Thus, this research examines the MSME sector's financial access regarding the FP unit in Kerala state, India. This work is centred on the questionnaire distribution along with the collection process. Primarily, the questionnaires were given to 879 owners of FP MSME sectors. After that, this research examines the financial access utilizing the collected MSME owners' responses. In that analysis segment, the research strives to gauge the financial resource gap, constraints, and barriers encountered by the MSME and examine the financial access as of the macro-economic development perspective view. This research study's result describes that the MSME sector's financial access is extremely sturdy.