Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday called upon bankers to play a pro-active role in the State’s mission for the promotion of Agriculture diversification in a big way to put the agrarian economy on strong footing.
Badal, presiding over 125th meeting of State level Bankers Committee (Punjab) convened by Punjab National Bank at Hotel Shivalikview, emphasized the need to enhance the credit flow to agriculture sector for giving impetus to the much-needed crop diversification program.
He bemoaned that direct agriculture advances have declined from 20.08 to 17.81 percent, demanding that this trend must be reversed without any further delay to encourage the farmers towards diversification. Showing concern over the low credit deposit ratio of 63 per cent of rural sector against the overall ratio of 80 percent in the state, Badal impressed upon the bankers to make concerted efforts to raise this ratio considerably as it was 124 percent and 112 percent in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh respectively.
likewise, the Chief Minister also pleaded to enhance the rate of advances to SC beneficiaries and other unprivileged sections of society. “Though there is spurt in the deposits, the credit to deserving sections of society is consistently on decline,” said Badal pointing out that advances to SC beneficiaries had been declined from 44.4 percent in June 2011 to 13.75 per cent in June 2013. In addition, Badal also solicited bankers’ cooperation in the state government’s initiative for setting up of Rural Self-Employment Training Institutes (RSETIs) to enable the unemployed youth to start their self-ventures.
“State government has already offered half to 1.25 acres land in 20 districts for these RSETIs. Bankers should finance the ventures of the trainees from these RSETIs liberally in a prompt and hassle-free manner,” he added. On the issue of financing the self-help groups, the Chief Minister said that 28,556 such groups have been formed till June 2013 of which 19,667 groups have been financed.