RBI pushes for increase in rural credit by RRBs

AK Mattu General Manager and Officer-in-Charge RBI Jammu and other bankers during meeting at Jammu on Thursday.
AK Mattu General Manager and Officer-in-Charge RBI Jammu and other bankers during meeting at Jammu on Thursday.

Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, Aug 30: The 47th meeting of the Empowered Committee (EC) on Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) for Jammu and Kashmir was held today in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), here.
AK Mattu, General Manager and Officer-in-Charge, RBI Jammu presided over the meeting. Suresh Chand, GM, NABARD, AK Pandey, DGM, SBI, Sudhir Gupta, Vice President, J&K Bank, Janakraj Angural, Chairman, J&K Grameen Bank, Parvinder Bharti, Chairman, Ellaquai Dehati Bank and other officials from RBI and banks participated in the meeting.
Initiating the discussions, Mattu recalled the basic objective of the establishment of Regional Rural Banks and observed that there were still a large number of rural and far flung areas of State where the proper banking services and facilities were still not available or were not adequate. He urged the banks to be proactive in extending rural reach of these services so as to aid the proper development of these neglected areas and also ensure to augment their lendable resources by effective recovery and NPA management. This would aid employment generation which in turns would add to the economic prosperity of people living over there and for the State as a whole, he added.
However, he cautioned the banks that the level of NPAs in their institutions was a matter of concern and required immediate remedial measures. Both the banks must take special and effective NPA management and recovery efforts to bring them down subsequently to manageable levels and ensure continuous monitoring, he added.
The meeting discussed and reviewed the areas like advances to priority sector, performance under Annual Credit Plan 2018-19, credit flow to agriculture sector, measures relating to Financial Literacy and Awareness Programme, strengthening security measures in the bank branches, compliance to KYC/AML guidelines etc. The deficient performance wherever observed was conveyed for effective and remedial steps so as to ensure that the target set for the year under ACP etc. and other prescribed performance parameters were fulfilled timely during the year.