Rains disrupt Surat clearing house work

Operations to resume today

Heavy rains and the resultant flood-like situation in Surat over the past four days has led to suspension of Surat clearing house operations for the last three days.

The clearing house has, however, announced on Friday that clearing operations would begin from Saturday.

Surat clearing house handles cheques worth around Rs 350 crore on an average per day.

Clearing of cheques worth around Rs 1,000 crore was delayed in the three days that the clearing house did not function. However, with most establishments remaining closed, not many cheques were issued, said clearing house sources.

Surat Bankers' Clearing House president H R Hirani said, "Our standing committee members had suspended the entire operations of the clearing house from August 4 to August 9. The decision was taken as many of the banks were flooded. Several clearing house processing centres and even our micro centre at Udhna Darwaza were submerged."

"But since the situation is fast returning to normal in Surat, another meeting of the standing committee members was held on Friday. It was decided to start the clearing house operations as usual from Saturday," Hirani said.

"We have issued notifications to our member-banks informing them that clearing house for return clearing cheques or instruments bearing clearing stamp of August 4 to August 7, will meet on August 7 between 2:45 pm and 3:30 pm," Hirani said.

"We have specifically asked the member banks to instruct their representatives to deliver by hand the return clearing cheques or instruments to the concerned representative. If any member bank's representative does not attend the clearing house, settlement would be subject to delay," Hirani said.

Surat Bankers' Clearing House has 89 member banks. It handles clearing operations of all banks, including nationalised, co-operative and private sector banks of the city.

On an average, the clearing house handles local cheques of Rs 350 crore everyday.