Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, May 22: While appreciating the commercial banks operating in the state for progress made in the field of deposit mobilization and credit expansion, the Minister for Finance and Ladakh Affairs, Abdul Rahim Rather today urged for redoubled efforts to improve their CD Ratio, which, he said was yet much below the national bench mark of 60%. However, he said, as a result of the efforts made by the Member Banks in this direction, the CD Ratio has improved to 44.58% as against the previous year’s figure of 36.51%.
Speaking at the 93rd meeting of J&K State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC), held at Sher-i-Kashmir International Convention Complex, the Finance Minister said that the deposits as on ending March 2014 have grown by about 12% over the corresponding figure for the previous financial year, while the credit size has grown by about 37%. He said the expansion of credit size is also in line with the trends noticed in the cumulative performance of all the Member Banks right from the first quarter of the year.
Chief Secretary, Iqbal Khanday, Regional Director (J&K) RBI, K. K. Saraf, Principal Secretary Planning and Development, B. R. Sharma, Principal Secretary, Finance, B. B. Vyas, Chairman J&K Bank, Mushtaq Ahmad, President J&K Bank, S. L. Bhat, General Manager, NABARD, Administrative Secretaries and Heads of various departments, senior functionaries of State Government, SIDBI, Public sector Banks, Regional Rural Banks, State/Central Cooperative Banks and representatives of other institutions were present on the occasion.
He asked the Commercial Banks operating in the State to formulate coordinated Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Plans for J&K on priority basis according to the directions by the Governor, Reserve Bank of India in the SLBC meeting held in May last year at Srinagar.
The Minister said that it was satisfactory to note that phase-I of the Swabhimaan Campaign or Financial Inclusion Plan for coverage of villages with population of over 2000 has been successfully completed by all the concerned banks, but there is some little gap between the total number of households to be covered and the number of FI accounts actually opened up to March 31, 2014.
Mr. Rather said the target of 100% coverage of farmers under the Kissan Credit Card (KCC) scheme has been repeatedly slipping out, adding that by the close of the financial year, which was the last extended target date for achieving 100% coverage of farmers, the progress reported is only about 73%. He impressed upon the J&K SLBC to discuss the reasons for the repeated slippages of the target dates at length and hammer out positive and practical solutions to remove all the bottlenecks in this regard.
Mr. Rather asked the J&K Bank to extend Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) scheme to the all remaining 16 districts of the state within the current financial year as this scheme is a landmark step in direction of management of all programmes involving Government subsides and financial benefits to the weaker sections of the society.
Giving a brief account of credit disbursement in J&K during last financial year under Action Credit Plan (ACP), the Chairman J&K Bank said that 42 Banks operating in the state with a network of 1831 branches as on 31st March, 2014 have extended a total credit of Rs. 10, 268.58 crore registering achievement of 63% of the ACP target in financial terms and 53% in physical terms. This includes priority sector credit of Rs. 5701.15 crore (56% achievement of Annual Target) favouring 3, 06,919 beneficiaries and non-priority credit sector of Rs. 4,567.43 crore disbursed in favour of 1,06,569 beneficiaries. With credit disbursement of Rs. 5701.15 crore to the priority sector credit, J&K Bank has been the major contributor ( its share 63.48%) in financial terms followed by SBI with contribution of Rs. 563.36 crore and PNB with Rs. 233.87 crore.
On this occasion, the Minister also released Financial Literacy Guide to be used by branch managers of rural banks and lead district managers for their monthly financial literacy camps.
Follow our WhatsApp channel