Bankers told to give more loans in four districts

PATNA: Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi has stressed the need to appoint business correspondent agents (BCAs) in the state’s 42,000 revenue villages and containment of extremism in extremist-hit districts through bank loaning activities as per the Centre’s policy.
“Bank loaning activities should be increased in Bihar’s four extremist-hit districts – Gaya, Lakhisarai, Aurangabad and Jamui,” Modi said while reviewing banking activities at the 65th state level bankers’ committee (SLBC) meeting in Patna on Saturday.
Talking to media persons later, Modi said bank loaning activities in Gaya and Lakhisarai districts were found to be “lower than those in Aurangabad and Jamui districts,” which was against the Centre’s policy.
There used to be 12 extremist-hit districts in the state earlier, but the launch of development and banking activities over the last one and half decade has brought their number to four, Modi said.
According to him, the state has 394 “unbanked” villages. Of them, 260 are located in the extremist-hit districts. “The bankers have been asked to appoint BCAs in all the 42,000 revenue villages over the next two to three years and cover ‘unbanked’ villages with them since the brick and mortar bank branch offices cannot be opened everywhere,” Modi said.
As on date, 15,025 BCAs have been appointed, while there are 3,588 bank branches in rural areas. “The BCAs sit at a fixed place in the villages and conduct banking transactions on a handset,” Modi said.
Against the target of disbursing Rs 1.3 lakh crore worth loans under annual credit plan in the state for 2018-19, the bankers achieved only 19.42% (or disbursed Rs 25,241 crore) of the target in the first quarter of the fiscal ending June 30, Modi said. He, however, added this was 11% more than the sum loaned in the first quarter of 2017-18. He appealed to the bankers to achieve 95% of the target as was done in 2015-16.
While the highest credit-deposit (C-D) ratio of 44.99% in the state was achieved in 2015-16, it hovered around it in 2014-15 and 2016-17, and has stood at 41.05% in the first quarter of the current fiscal.
Modi asked the bankers to resolve such problems as delayed transfer of money into the accounts of beneficiaries, and also sort out the IT-related bottlenecks, which result in anomalies in banking data. Citing the case of Banka district level bankers’ committee meeting, which he had also attended, Modi said the achievement was merely 30% in 2017-18, but the figure cited at the meeting was 74%.
He also said Rs 6,277 crore has been deposited in the 3.46 crore Jan Dhan accounts of the poor in the state, while Rs 23,218 crore worth of loan has been disbursed among 34 lakh persons under various sub-heads of the Mudra Yojana.