An Empirical Study on Export Financing (Awareness, Impact and Satisfaction) among Handicraft Export Firms in India

The present paper is empirical in nature and studies the Export Financing ( Awareness, Impact and Satisfaction) among Handicraft Export Firms in India. The study finds out whether the handicraft exporting firms are aware about the export finance and how many are using export finance? This paper further explores the effectiveness of the export finance in increasing the exports by finding the correlation between the increase in export sales just after getting the finance and regular increase in export finance in five consecutive years; satisfaction level of the firm with the institution providing export finance. Other parameters which have been found out in the study are the reasons for taking finance from a particular bank and what are the most important aspects for all the firms for choosing a bank for export finance? Firms with turnover less than 1 Crore do not use export finance. This could be explained with the fact that as their turnover is low, they get smaller orders for which they have their own capital and also for smaller orders, buyers do not mind giving advance. Majority of the firms availing the export finance use Pre-shipment only followed by both Pre-shipment as well as Post Shipment Finance and that too in Indian Rupees. The export sales increase just after the year export finance is availed. There is a very high degree positive correlation between the Export Finance and Export Sales. Firms availing Export Finance are satisfied with their institution providing Finance and the most satisfying factor is the behaviour of the staff. Major data has been collected with the help of questionnaire using a five point likert scale. The tools for data analysis are mean standard deviation, chi-square and correlation.