Chief Secretary Rajwant Sandhu said that 17 lakh people of the State have got enrolled for the ADHAR Card under the ADHAR Enrolment Programme whereas seven lakh ADHAR cards have already been issued so far. She urged the banks for issuance of UID enabled Smart Cards as a prospective model so that financially excluded sections could be brought into the formal banking fold to have better options for them to avail banking facilities through various delivery channels.
Rajwant Sandhu was speaking in the 121st State level Bankers Committee Meeting held here today.
Sandhu said that banks have disbursed fresh credit of Rs. 2074 crore to 97706 units under various activities in the State and surpassed the targets by 125 percent. She said that sincere efforts should be made to increase the flow of credit in the agriculture sector. She said that banks should motivate farmers to avail the benefits under Kisan Credit Cards and stressed upon the need to carry out mapping of resources available at the village level besides appropriate planning to explore these in a time bound manner.
Chief Secretary disclosed that the deposits with Banks have increased by 21 percent over previous years reaching to Rs. 41853.07 crores and advances grown by 13 percent reaching to the level of 18492.81 crores. She advised the bankers to increase the flow of credit to match the increase in deposits so that CD ratio could be improved from the present level of 67 percent. There was an urgent need to pay attention to draw strategy for improving CD ratio of eight districts having low CD ratio, she added.
Sandhu emphasized upon the implementation of action plan as advised by Government of India to provide crop loan to each farmer in the State by the banks in time bound manner. She assured the banks to extend necessary support from the State Government machinery in implementation of the action plan to upscale the crop loan financing. She added that the progress under the special action plan on crop loan financing would be monitored on regular basis at the senior level by the State level monitoring committee.
While reviewing the progress made by banks under Financial Inclusion Plan 2010-12, the Chief Secretary urged the Banks to provide banking facilities to all the 48 unbanked villages with population over 2000 by December, 2011. She said that all 532 unbanked villages with population of 1000-2000 identified under the second phase of financial inclusion plan 2013 in the State should be provided access to the banking facilities.
Ajay Kumar, Executive Director, UCO Bank said that a total network of 1500 branches were catering financial services to the people of the State out of which 1220 branches were located in rural areas. He emphasized for a joint campaign by State Government and banks to spread financial literacy and awareness to achieve the greater objective of inclusive growth.
Dr. Shrikant Baldi, Principal Secretary, Finance gave valuable inputs regarding various aspects in the meeting. Sunil Kakkar, Field General Manager, UCO Bank welcomed the Chief Secretary. Principal Secretaries, Secretaries, senior officers of the State Government and representatives of various banks attended the meeting.
