Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Poor loan disbursal under fire

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, DEC. 24. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) legislator from Singanallur, K.C. Karunakaran, today accused the bankers of not complying with the orders of the Union Finance Ministry in extending financial assistance to those in distress.

At the District Level Review Committee Meeting (DLRC) here, he said that such review meetings had become a mere ritual. Even before he said this, the District Collector, S. Kosalaraman, who presided, lamented that most of the bankers attending the meeting had not done their homework properly. Mere physical presence at such meetings as a ritual would not help in ensuring the development of the district.

The Project Officer, District Rural Development Agency, P. Jayabalakrishnan, Lead District Manager, S. Venkataraman, Assistant General Manager of Canara Bank (Lead Bank), N. Ganapathyraman, endorsed these views.

Dismal performance

The Lead District Officer for Coimbatore from the Reserve Bank of India, R. Sampath and District Development Manager of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), K.V. Subhramanyan, pulled up the banks for dismal performance and sought an explanation. They referred to the wide gap between the number of applications received, loans sanctioned and the cases in which the financial assistance had been disbursed. They also came down heavily on the bankers for not filing their performance reports. This defeated the objective of conducting District Level Review Committee (DLRC) meetings and District Consultative Committee (DCC) meetings for the bankers.

The legislators from the Congress, V.K. Lakshmanan (Coimbatore East) and Kovai Thangam (Valparai) also urged the bankers to be sensitive to the needs of those who required financial assistance. Mr. Karunakaran wanted the forum to find out how much progress had been made after the previous meetings. "What was the action taken on the observations made during the previous meeting? Please keep the meeting informed with relevant statistics rather than discussing mind-boggling ones". Piquant situation

He accused them of having failed to meet their commitment in terms of educational loans, short-term crop loans and in extending financial assistance to the aspiring entrepreneurs under the SIDCO and TAHDCO sponsored schemes. Even if the applicants had fulfilled the eligibility conditions, the bankers were in the practice of asking for IT papers, property documents with a view to make the applicants run away, he charged. The bankers should come forward and openly publicise a list of documents required, rather than leaving it to the interpretation of individual branch managers, which actually left the applicants in a piquant situation. Accusing the bankers of being business oriented and of redtapism, he said that if required, as an elected representative, he would it take it to the notice of the Finance Ministry. Observing that such meetings were a waste of time, he staged a walkout.

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