"We have received feedbacks from the industry about the exchange and we are analysing these. We expect that the exchange will come up by the end of this year," said M L Roy Executive Director of SEBI on Monday. He was speaking at the sidelines of a seminar `Alternative Avenues to SME Financing'.

He did not comment whether it will be an independent exchange or come up under an existing stock exchange.

At the seminar, Chief General Manager SBI of West Bengal Circle Jayant K Sinha said while the Centre has set up a yearly target of nearly 20 percent increase in the SME lending, the SBI has recorded around 30 per cent increase.

"ICCICI Bank is coming up with a private equity fund meant for the SME sector with a corpus of 200 million US $ in the next six months," said Sanjiv Sherawat, Head -Business Banking ICICI Bank Limited.

The fund will cater to the areas of pharma products, jewellery, capital goods and auto components, he added.

A senior official of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Ramesh Datla said the CII will identify 15 SMEs across the country under their `Model SME programme.