Under the financial inclusion plan, a total of 836 villages in Orissa having population of over 2,000 persons have been provided banking facility by the end of March 2011. The state has 1,878 such eligible villages.
“All banks have to take a note of it and start implementing the financial inclusion plan,” said a release issued by State Level Banking Committee (SLBC).
The National Rural Financial Inclusion Plan (NRFIP), launched during 12th Five Year Plan, aims at providing financial services, including credit, to at least 50 per cent of financially excluded households in the country by 2012 through rural or semi-urban branches of commercial banks and through Regional Rural Banks (RRBs). The remaining households have to be covered by 2015.
To meet this requirement, most of the banks in the state are launching mobile van banking facility in small villages.
The SLBC meeting noted that banks are not providing enough credit to agricultural sector in the state. “Banks have to finance more and more to agriculture sector to enhance the income of the farmers, to pullout them from the clutches of private money lenders and increase the agriculture production and productivity to boost the economy of the state,” said the release.
As per the guidelines issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), banks are mandated to lend 18 per cent of the previous year's net bank credit to the agriculture sector. In the current financial year, banks have to lend Rs 12, 924 crore to the farm sector in the state.
Most of the banks in the state have not increased their credit to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and to micro and small enterprises (MSEs) and many applications for availing loans for pisciculture are pending before the banks, the SLBC meet observed.
“Banks should give more stress on financing SMEs, MSEs for the development of the state. Pending applications from National Horticulture Board and Fisheries Department should be disposed off promptly,” the SLBC noted.
