Monday, Nov 29, 2004
Monday, Nov 29, 2004 |
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Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Karnataka
By Our Staff Correspondent
KINNIGOLI (MANGALORE TALUK), NOV. 28. The focus of development in the future will be rural-oriented where ordinary people such as farmers, petty businessmen, floriculturists, rural artisans, and others will be made "credit-worthy" and ushered into an era of "micro credit" system, the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, has said. Launching 1,053 self-help groups (SHGs) jointly constituted by the Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project (SKDRDP) and Corporation Bank here, Mr. Chidambaram said the task before the country was to give millions of unemployed youth their share of employment, socio-economic empowerment, a life of dignity, and bring all economically marginalised classes into the mainstream socio-economic activity. Mr. Chidambaram, announcing three major thrust areas to achieve this, said that the "micro credit approach" was a foolproof method, and pointed out that every bank would implement the Government policy of making micro credit a workable model, especially when the Government was offering a funding of Rs. 80,000 crores for agricultural lending, and the total rural sector lending being pegged at Rs. 1,05,000 crores in the next few years. The second thrust area was that no student, especially girls, would be denied professional education just because their parents could not afford it. Banks would be directed to provide them long-term soft interest and phased repayment loans that needed no collateral security or guarantor. Thirdly, NGOs would have to take charge of disbursing the credit to SHGs, he added. Mr. Chidambaram stated that the Government aimed at constituting 10.9 lakh SHGs and 5.85 lakh of them would be added in the next five years. In 2005, 1.85 lakh SHGs would be formed and in 2006 and 2007 two lakh SHGs each would be added.
Creditworthiness
The Finance Minister said that one of the niche areas in micro credit would be money within the reach of people to carry on businesses, agriculture, and other activities. He said he believed that the common people were more credit-worthy than the mega industrial and business houses where a huge volume of credit was being "written off" while the credit-worthy people at the grassroots remained "impoverished" despite being honest in repayment. The Finance Minister pointed out that the repayment in the rural sector was nearing 100 per cent, especially in the SHG sector. But because of the banking norms the SHGs could not be directly given credit and this was where the NGOs such as SKDRDP should step in to ensure that the credit reached the SHGs.
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