As Haryana is poised for a record rabi production in wheat this year, efforts should be made to ensure that the good inflow of cash to the farmers is leveraged to create a long-term financial asset, a top state bureaucrat said on Tuesday.
The crop bounty, thus, provides multiple opportunity as well as challenges to the banking sector, A M Sharan, FC & PS (finance) to the government, pointed out. “The (expected) surplus with farmers should not be frittered away. It needs to be utilised well. Steps should be taken to channel that money to create long-term assets,” he noted, speaking at the 120th meeting of SLBC, Haryana.
The record production of wheat has already started showing results. Both Punjab and Haryana had recently started facing a shortage of gunny bags, prompting the Centre to allow their re-use.
Punjab National Bank executive director Usha Ananthasubramanian, speaking at the meeting, said the state’s banking system had achieved all national goals except under one under the differential rate of interest (DRI). “The performance of scheduled banks’ lending under the DRI is below stipulated target of 1 per cent,” she pointed out.
Otherwise, the banks in the state have adhered to the RBI guideline of financially including villages with a population of over 2,000 people, by covering all such 1,838 unbanked villages as per the State-Level Bankers Committee report, she added. The total deposit in Haryana, as per the report, increased by Rs 21,874 crore over a year’s period — from Rs 119,711 crore in March 2011 to Rs 141,585 crore in March ’12, marking an increase of 18 per cent.
As for priority-sector advances, they, too, rose from Rs 43,044 crore to Rs 51,113 crore during 2011-12. The agriculture advances rose from Rs 20,948 crore (March ’11) to Rs 24,972 crore (March ’12), while advances to the MSME sector has increased from Rs 15,845 crore to Rs 18,337 crore during the same period.
Overall, Haryana’s ratio for the certificate of deposits stood at 80 per cent.
