Bankers' body forms plans to reduce poverty in Punjab

The 96th State Level Bankers' Committee meeting of Punjab, held at Chandigarh on Friday, discussed the issue of farmers' indebtedness at length.

Punjab Principal Secretary (Finance) GS Kalha said banks can play a vital role in reducing rural poverty in Punjab. He said the commercial banks and the state government have to come together to transform agriculture in Punjab.

He suggested that the banks can select one or two districts in the state to help farmers to get out of the clutches of private moneylenders.

He cited Gurdaspur and Mansa districts as areas that could serve as pilot projects. Gurdaspur is a border district and Mansa had reported maximum number of deaths of farmers caught in debt traps.

He added that small scale industries (SSIs) of Punjab form the backbone of the state's economy. Punjab has about 2,00,000 small scale units as compared to 500 medium and large units. So, banks can help in technology upgradation of SSIs and provide them working capital to improve their viability.

"The key to growth is provision of credit for technology upgradation, which in turn will help SSIs to up their production," he said.

Punjab National Bank Executive Director Raghuraman said that 15 new branches of commercial banks were being opened in the state during the review period.

This will raise our network to 2,755 branches as on March, 2006. Raghuraman said that the aggregate deposits of the bank increased by 8.6 per cent, from Rs 67,279 crore to Rs 73,083 crore, during the review period, from 1 April, 2005 to 31 March, 2006. In absolute terms, credit increased by Rs 8,613 crore, from Rs 36,695 crore to Rs 45,308 crore during this period, thereby registering an increase of 23.5 per cent.

ID Singh, general manager, Punjab National Bank, said that the Punjab Agricultural University has submitted a roadmap on "Basic and Strategic Research in Agriculture" to the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) for spending the Rs 100 crore grant, allocated by the Union government in the budget of 2006-07.

"The roadmap envisages setting up of centres of excellence in the areas of crop bio-technology and improvement, farm animal biotechnology, food processing and value addition, natural resources management, bio energy, and farm power and machinery. The centres of excellence will provide sustainability and stability to agriculture and open further avenues for value addition to agriculture produce," he said.

Singh added that the banks in Punjab have finalised the targets under the annual credit plan (ACP) 2006-07 for agriculture, SSI and other PS advances.

The targets allocated under ACP 2006-07 for agriculture are Rs 17,839 crore, which are higher by Rs 2,230 crore than the achievements of ACP 2005-06 of Rs15,609 crore. Percentage-wise, it is higher by 14.1 per cent.

Similarly, the targets under ACP 2006-07 for SSIs are Rs 3,808 crore, which are higher than those achieved under ACP 2005-06.