Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Friday said he has asked PSU banks to provide loans at lower interest rates to workmen, like cobblers and washermen, and brushed aside apprehensions of possible repayment delays by them.

Chidambaram said he had directed that all branches of PSU banks, numbering over 70,000, should provide Rs 5,000 loans at four per cent interest to workmen. He also wanted shepherds and fishermen to be added to the list of workers who could be given the loans.

In his address at a function organised by the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry, he said the contribution of this section of the society should not be underestimated or undervalued.

"They are the ones that sustain the village economy," he said. Setting aside apprehensions that this section might default on their repayments or slip away, he said that when Rs 12,000 crore (Rs 120 billion) could be written off for the steel industry why should such fears over smaller amounts arise.

He also said that these small entrepreneurs traditionally continued to work from the same place for years and hence there was no question of them slipping away. It is those who deal with stock exchange who disappear after siphoning off money, he said in lighter vein.