The Mysore-headquartered Cauvery Kalpatharu Grameena Bank (CKGB) has touched a new milestone, clocking a business of Rs 3,000 crore during quarter-ending December 31, 2009.
While the deposits of the bank stood at Rs 1,661.29 crore, advances were at Rs 1,355.53 crore. It had seen a business growth of Rs 408 crore over March 2009.
The bank’s new regional office building was declared open in Tumkur on December 13 and it has proposed to build its own building for its regional offices in Bangalore and Hassan. All 210 branches of the bank are fully-computerised and it is initiating action to migrate to core banking by the end of next September to fall in line with commercial banks.
It is also implementing business correspondent models on an experimental basis to take banking service by adopting technological innovations to the doorsteps of the adopted villages to start with and then to cover all villages under its jurisdiction.
Another target is to convert 100 villages as Sampoorna (total) solar villages and Sampoorna Vimaa (total insurance) villages, chairman Shivaswamy said in a release.
CKGB is a pioneer in forming and linking self-help groups (SHGs). In fact, it was the first bank in the country to start formation and linkage of SHGs. It has promoted SHGs on its own as self-help promoting institutions (SHPI) and successfully completed the scheme. This is popularly known as ‘CGB model’ throughout the country and brought it the best bank award for the third consecutive year from the Nabard under the RRB category, he said.
While aiming at credit linking over 5,000 SHGs during March 2010 quarter-ending, it is presently celebrating ‘SHG month’ to cover maximum number of eligible SHGs under the credit umbrella.
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In collaboration with the National Scheduled Tribes Finance and Development Corporation, the bank intends to finance tribal SHGs and persons at a low 6 per cent interest per annum.
CKGB, Shivaswamy said, is also financing joint liability groups (JLGs) where farmers do not have any revenue records to produce to the bank/financial institutions. After contacting such farmers, it has persuaded them to form JLGs.
The groups were provided hassle-free loans. The international programme participants of the College of Agricultural Banking, RBI, Pune, visited its branches recently to study the implementation of the scheme. Other rural banks including commercial banks are seeking guidelines to implement the scheme.
“Our bank has done well on all fronts by actively participating in financing agricultural and various government-sponsored schemes with a special focus on promoting financial inclusion in villages,” the chairman added.