The Hindu
- Banks will offer 22 per cent more loans in 2008-09
Mangalore, Mar 27: Banks in Dakshina Kannada District will offer 22 per cent more loans in 2008-09 as compared to the current fiscal. The increase accounts for Rs. 511 crore in absolute terms. The outlay for the credit plan is Rs. 2,826.53 crore. The priority sector, mainly consisting of agriculture, will get Rs. 1,910 crore which accounts for 68 per cent of the plan. Non-priority sector – professionals and educational institutions – gets Rs. 916 crore.
Deputy Commissioner M. Maheshwar Rao launched the credit plan here on Wednesday. The outlay for agriculture with regard to priority sector lending is Rs. 708.63 crore. Mr. Rao, who appreciated the 17 per cent increase in lending to agriculture, urged banks to pay equal attention to lending to the horticultural sector and improving productivity there.
New areas
Advising bankers to concentrate upon lending to small-scale industries and to the non-farm sector, he said such a wide spread in credit would ensure all-round increase in income at the urban and rural levels.
K.P. Sucharitha Shetty, president, Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat, who released the credit plan in compact disc format, urged the bankers to mitigate credit woes faced by farmers, owing to damage to standing crops in wake on unseasonable rain in the district recently. Nationalised banks should step up lending to agriculture and help ameliorate the plight of farmers, especially those in Moodbidri area, he said.
SyndicateBank, the lead bank for the district, has prepared the credit plan by consolidating the credit plans of 370 branches of 45 banks operating in the district. As part of the outlay, commercial banks would contribute Rs. 2,093 crore, followed by South Canara District Central Cooperative Bank which would give Rs. 667 crore. Banks have made appropriate allocations under different government-sponsored schemes to the tune of Rs. 47.45 crore.
Credit disbursement to the farm sector in the annual credit plan for 2007-08 showed an achievement of 101 per cent up to December 2007, with disbursement of Rs. 618.10 crore as against a target of Rs. 607.92 crore. The overall achievement in this regard up to December is 76 per cent.
Banks in the district achieved a business transaction level of Rs. 15,812 crore as on December 2007, including Rs. 9,686 crore in the form of deposits and Rs. 6,126 crore in the form of advances.