Peeved over the callous attitude of the commercial banks in fulfilling their targets fixed by the State-level Bankers’ Committee (SlBC) on crop loans and agriculture term loans, the State Government has decided to issue notices to five non-performing banks.
The notices will be issued to two public-sector banks, IDBI Bank and Syndicate Bank, and three private-sector banks, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Karnataka Bank, as to why they should not be dropped from the list of the banks eligible for investment of Government and public sector funds.
Additional Chief Secretary Finance UN Behera chaired a meeting of the bankers here on Tuesday to review the performances of the banks and expressed displeasure over their poor performances though the State Government has been supportive to them.
Commissioner-cum-Secretary Cooperation Bishnupada Sethi; Commissioner-cum-Secretary Commerce & Transport G Mathivathanan; Registrar, Cooperative Societies PK Pradhan; MD, Odisha State Cooperative Bank (OSCB) Tusar Kanti Panda, representatives of the Reserve Bank of India and other banks were present during the review.
It came to light that the achievement of the public-sector banks is 28.85 per cent against the original target and 24.45 per cent against the revised target. And the performance of the private-sector banks is quite dismal, being 21.66 per cent and 18.36 per cent, respectively.
However, the performances of the cooperative banks are found quite satisfactory, being 57.14 per cent and 48.42 per cent.
It was found that the performances of major banks like the State bank of India and UCO Bank are not satisfactory and they together have pulled down the aggregate achievement of the State to such a lower level.
The performances of the Regional Rural Banks like the Odisha Gramya Bank and Utkal Gramin Bank are also far from satisfactory although their main task is disbursement of agricultural credit. They were advised to improve their performances so that the revised targets can be achieved without fail.
It was decided that the banks should report their achievements up to November 31 by the first week so that the performances would be reviewed at the next SlBC meeting scheduled to be held on November 17.
The NABARD was advised to enhance the refinance limit sanctioned in favour of the OSCB to the level of its eligibility of the revised target so that they can have adequate resources to achieve higher targets.