Shimla: With as many as 11 percent of households in the state outside the banking system, the government has impressed upon bankers to launch an intensive drive to achieve full coverage and bring each household under financial inclusion.
With it being revealed at the 12th State Level Bankers Committee meeting, held here Thursday that of 14.77 lakh households registered under 2011 census, only 13.16 lakh households were availing banking services, chief secretary Sudripta Roy asked banks to prepare a roadmap for extending banking to every village.
“Unless each household is not brought into the banking system, the objective of bringing the entire state under financial inclusion will never be achieved,” said Roy who was presiding over the meeting that monitors sectoral credit off take in the state.
Direct transfer schemes, both of the state and centre, would deprive beneficiaries of their entitlements unless full financial inclusion is achieved, he added.
Roy said that the union government had identified Hamirpur, Una, Bilaspur, and Mandi districts for direct transfer in implementing kerosene subsidy scheme, where banks have to ensure a bank account in the name of family head for eligible beneficiaries.
A pilot of the scheme was ready for testing in Una district, he added.
The banks report card showed that Rs 2213 crore of credit was released by banks in the first quarter to about 1.31 lakh customers. Bank businesses grew by 19.83 percent during the period. For the financial year, banks have set a target of disbursing Rs 9348 crore fresh loans.
By adding 70 new branches, the banking network has 1570 branches in the state now, besides the 686 ATM machines dispensing retail cash.
For distribution of social security pension scheme in Bilaspur district, banks had started implementing ICT based business correspondents model on the pilot basis for 151 panchayats.
UCO bank general manager Venkat Raman let the meet know that there was making efforts to start with Aadhaar enabled payment system in 28 Gram Panchayats under ‘One District-Many Banks-One leader bank model’ guidelines for which have been issued by RBI.
He said that seeding of Aadhaar numbers in the bank accounts had started in Bilaspur, Una and Hamirpur districts where UIDAI has enrolled more than 80 percent population.
Ramana said that in Himachal Pradesh, wider extent of financial inclusion was visible with per branch population of 4367 as against National Average of above 18000 and having high proportion of 89 percent of households availing banking services.
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