Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Start credit counselling centres, banks told

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Each bank in the State should have a financial education and credit counselling centre in at least one district in order to further the concept of financial inclusion, R.N. Panigrahi, Deputy General Manager, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said on Friday.

He was speaking at a function organised here by the District Consultative Committee for Banking Development to declare Thiruvananthapuram a Total Banking District.

The RBI had asked the State-Level Bankers Committee to set up such centres in each district. The process of financial inclusion had only begun with getting poor people to open bank accounts. At a time when many schemes existed to attract people, public banks had to come forward to counsel poor people on what and how much to borrow. The new thinking was that banking with the poor was not poor banking, he said. The concept of financial inclusion was very dear to the RBI, he said.

In his inaugural address, Pannian Ravindran, MP, said nationalised banks were the mainstay of the nation in times of need. Global capital was today eyeing the enormously lucrative service sector, particularly the banking sector. It wanted to use the people in the country to generate profits that it could take away from here. Though very educated and well-informed, it was the people from Kerala who got cheated the most by fraudulent financial schemes touted by various parties. In such a situation, it was critical to sustain the growth of nationalised banks.

The need of the hour was for a ‘united front’ between the people and the nationalised banks, he said.

Mr. Ravindran later officially declared Thiruvananthapuram as a Total Banking District. Additional District Magistrate K. Surendran handed over a plaque containing the declaration to Mr. Panigrahi. In his address, Mr. Surendran said bankers should be very liberal in granting education loans. Nowadays, almost all complaints about the sanctioning of such loans that reached the Collectorate were solved by the bankers themselves. Banks should set up more ATMs so that the people could operate their accounts in a better manner.

According to a press note issued by Indian Overseas Bank’s Lead Bank Office, 2,89,912 savings accounts were opened in the district since October 1, 2006. Of these 90,999 were ‘no-frills accounts.’ An amount of Rs.6.59 crore was disbursed under the general purpose credit card scheme, it said.

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