Chief Secretary Rajwant Sandhu disclosed that the banks have disbursed loans amounting to Rs. 4496cr to finance 174473 units for various activities under annual credit plan 2011-12 thereby surpassing the half yearly targets by 127 percent. She said that deposits with banks have increased by 24 percent over previous year reaching Rs. 45045cr. She was presiding over the 122nd State level Bankers Committee meeting here today.
Chief Secretary advised the banks to focus upon improvement in domestic CD ratio and prepare a realistic plan to improve the same in eight districts above 40 percent minimum barrier. She also asked them to fill up the gap in disbursement of loans in few districts especially Bilaspur, Chamba, Kullu and Hamirpur districts.
She urged the banks to make sincere efforts for achieving 100 percent credit inclusion by covering about three lakhs households in the State where all households were already covered by 100% Finance Inclusion Plan initiative, announced by Government of India. She urged the Banks to extend banking services in all 532 villages having population 1000 plus, by September 2012, well in advance. She said that banks should strengthen their functioning in such a way as to benefit a common man living in the remotest area of the State. She highlighted the importance of agriculture sector in the State economy and urged the banks to increase the flow of credit of agriculture. She emphasized the need for 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 laid emphasis to implement Electronic Benefit Scheme (EBT) scheme for distribution of Social Security Pension Payments as well as other three schemes identified by Government of India to transfer subsidies on LPG, fertilizers and kerosene, directly to accounts of beneficiaries and appealed the nodal departments to work out a comprehensive plan with banks. S. Chandersekharan, Executive Director, UCO Bank said that UCO Bank had taken a corporate decision to waive off any kind of processing fee/charges for sanction of crop loan to farmers upto Rs. two lakhs aiming to give a boost in agriculture lending.
He said that the farmers and horticulturists would be benefitted by adoption of Common Loan Application Form approved by banks to facilitate the farmer community for hassle free loaning and identification of eligible farmers by Agriculture and other nodal departments. B. Venkat Ramana, Field General Manager, UCO Bank welcomed the Chief Secretary. Dr. Shrikant Baldi, Principal Secretary, Finance gave valuable suggestions for rapid economic growth of the State. Additional Chief Secretaries, Principal Secretaries, Secretaries, Heads of Departments, Shri S.K. Jindal, Director, Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India, Jasbir Singh, Regional Director RBI, Naresh Gupta, Chief General Manager NABARD attended the meeting.
